This spring, IBASHO presents the first exhibition in the Benelux by Japanese photographer Shimpei Yamagami. His works question the act of looking itself and is highly regarded in his country of origin. With the series Epiphany, the artist emphasises an internal sensitivity and perceptual openness.
Shimpei Yamagami is a Japanese photographer born in 1984 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. He studied at Tokyo Visual Arts before starting his professional artistic activity around 2010. Since then he has participated in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad, and published several photography books.
Yamagami questions the act of seeing – how perception shapes imagery. He explores a tactile, perceptive gaze rather than one that seeks to grasp or control its subject.
The series Epiphany spans from 2018 to 2021 and was part of the group exhibition “Leap Before You Look” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. The series is now in the permanent collection of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.
Epiphany embraces unfamiliar states, leading the viewer rather than trying to fix or control them. Both in black-and-white and in colour, Yamagami cycles through concrete, isolated subjects and abstract, pattern-like motifs. There is an air of profoundness in his images, and a sense of some greater truth that may be reached through photography.
Yamagami reflects on photography as a medium that can lead to unexpected inner experiences, suggesting that static pictures might become animated or expressive of states beyond the surface.
Shimpei Yamagami: “I am eager to always be sensitive inside. That is not in order to take photographs there, in my inner world. It is in order to be susceptible to the real world outside, and take photographs in it. To heighten my sensitivity so that it may cause me pain. Photographs take me to new horizons time and again. Come to think of it, I have been taking photos in an almost frantic manner. I started with a thoroughly challenging point of view, now I focus more on the plain and undramatic. This doesn’t mean that I got tired. It’s because I have come to feel spirituality in primitive shapes and original states. What were supposed to be static pictures, become photographs that are alive and moving. Now I am eager to enter the new phase they will take me to this time.”
Epiphany is on view from 21 March to 3 May 2026 at IBASHO in Antwerp. The vernissage takes place on Saturday 21 March from 14:00 to 18:00. The artist will be present throughout the afternoon.
Shimpei Yamagami : Epiphany
21 March – 3 May 2026
IBASHO
Tolstraat 67
2000 Antwerp, Belgium
www.ibashogallery.com
