Altman Siegel is pleased to present its final exhibition, It is not far to the sea, a presentation of new paintings by Shinpei Kusanagi.

The older I get,
the closer I get to the end,
the more my body becomes transparent,
the lighter it becomes.
That process. That journey.
The sea is not so far away.

There is still a road ahead of me,
and there is a road behind me.
There are still things I must do,
and there are things I no longer need to do.
I will die along the way anyway.

April 14, 2020
I was unable to be with my father in his final moments.
I have been thinking about that ever since.
The shape of his toes was just like mine.
What was all that commotion about?

I will not forgive you.
I will not forgive myself.
Engrave it on your heart.
I will not board any train.
I will not move from here.
That is the thing.

I was waving my hands vigorously.
Someone was supposed to wave back at me vigorously.
But
I just wanted you to see the scene before your eyes.
I just wanted to catch the words that fell from your lips.
But even that has lost its meaning now.
We will never know the truth.
I know very well that the bridge has been burned.
I know it very well!
I wanted to believe in a small fantasy.

The sea is not so far away.
A mirage.
An illusion.
A sandy beach.
-ish
painting.

(Shinpei Kusanagi, Untitled, 2025)

Shinpei Kusanagi’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Altman Siegel, San Francisco, CA; Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Shop Taka Ishii Gallery, Hong Kong, China; Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Gallery Sora, Tokyo, Japan; Bankart Studio, Yokohama, Japan; Makii Masaru Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan; and Janjanble, Tokyo, Japan. Group exhibitions include Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL; Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and Palace Pocia, Vienna, Austria; among others. The artist’s work can be found in the collections of the Loewe Foundation; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; and the UBS Art Collection, London, UK.