ShugoArts Online Show
Atsushi YAMAMOTO Video Hut 3 — Afterglow
Dates: 26 July – 30 August 2025
Click here to see the show.
In the summer of 2025, ShugoArts will present Video Hut 3 – Afterglow, an online screening project by video artist Atsushi Yamamoto. This marks the third installment of the ongoing series Video Hut, which began in 2023.
Atsushi Yamamoto initially studied painting at Tama Art University, but his experience studying abroad in Berlin prompted a shift toward video production. Rather than focusing on how or what to create, he pursues the question of what is being done in his work. Using everything from his surroundings, he continues to produce a vast number of works in an effort to visualize “a world he truly wants to see.”
Two years ago, he explored the theme of “huts,” presenting a body of work centered on “spaces”—ranging from a temporary space to a Zambian movie theater, a lighthouse, and a swimming pool. Last year, his focus turned to “time,” capturing its various manifestations, from cosmic timescales to the cycle of the seasons, the duration it takes for incense to burn out, and the moment a tear falls.
Now in its third year, this edition presents six new works inspired by the artist’s late grandfather, who passed away in December of last year, as well as the house and belongings he left behind. The spacious and solidly built home—with a garden and tennis court—was constructed in the suburbs of Tokyo during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth. Over the years, it has been altered and filled with everyday items, furnishings, souvenirs, books, and more. Things that once went unnoticed during the grandparents’ lifetime now assert their presence in the absence of their owners, stirring memories and evoking the past.
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, Soul flow, 2025
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, It cannot stay and will continue to be lost., 2025
“I felt that I could grasp a more tangible and concrete sense of who my grandfather was—not so much through the man himself, who was quiet and reserved, but through the things he left behind, like his notebooks and photographs.”
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, Our Practice, 2025
While tracing the presence of his grandfather, Yamamoto confronts fundamental questions such as: “What constitutes a person’s true essence?” “Where does the soul reside?” and “Aside from memory, is there anything that can anchor the ever-shifting sense of ‘self’ in this world?” Through the process of making, the artist comes to a renewed awareness that he, too, is shaped by the works he has created in the past. However, the meaning that these works hold for his family or for society at large remains uncertain.
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, 3 COUNTS, 2025
“For me, however, they are not something that can be measured by conventional standards of meaning or value. Rather, I believe that their fixed figures are themselves the forms of who I am—and the forms of my life.”
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, Tennis court, stage, drums, 2025
“In other words, this time, I might say that starting from my grandfather’s death, I am reflecting—through the ‘things (mono/物) left behind’—on myself as someone (mono/者) who has been left behind, while also contemplating what I, in turn, will leave behind, both as a person (mono/者) and in the form of things (mono/物).”
Atsushi YAMAMOTO, The WORLD, 2025
Once again this year, we invite you to enjoy a carefully curated lineup—offered to all of us, living each day like lingering afterglow, fleeting yet continuous.
ShugoArts, July 2025