The first exhibition opens in October

For ten days in October, fifty works from Chapter One will be shown in a former tea house on the eastern edge of Kyoto. The building is more than two hundred years old. The floors are tatami. The doors are paper. You will need to take your shoes off.

The building

We were introduced to the tea house through a collector who has spent a decade quietly restoring it. It has not been open to the public in living memory. For these ten days, it will be — but only by invitation, and only to twelve visitors at a time.

The rooms are small. A single scroll usually hangs in each. We are treating that constraint as the whole point of the exhibition. Fifty works, distributed one or two to a room, with long empty corridors of nothing between them. You walk. You sit. You walk again.

"The empty rooms between the works are also part of the exhibition."

The evening conversations

There will be no wall text. Every piece is present on its own terms. Instead, every evening at seven, one collector, one visitor, and one member of the studio will sit together in the main tea room for a single unrecorded conversation about a single piece. No cameras, no notes, no transcript. Whatever is said stays in the room.

Ten evenings. Ten conversations. Ten pieces. That is the whole program.

How to attend

Verified collectors will receive an invitation with a specific date and time; the invitation is for two. A small number of visitor spots will open the week before to the wider community — the concierge will hold a list. If you would like to be considered, leave your name.