Yosuke Amemiya Solo exhibition “Still Alive, Already a Flashback”
session：2026.9.19sat - 11.9sat 13:00 - 19:00
*closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary / 404 Hayano Bldg. 2-13-12 Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
opening reception : 2026.9.19sat 17:00 - 19:00
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present “Still Alive, Already a Flashback” by Yosuke Amemiya from September 19 (Saturday) to November 7 (Saturday), 2026.
Yosuke Amemiya was born in 1975 in Ibaraki, Japan. He completed his master’s degree at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2013. He subsequently worked primarily in Berlin for about 10 years before returning to Japan in 2022. He is currently based in Yamanashi and Tokyo.
Amemiya creates works using a wide range of media, including drawing, sculpture, performance, and VR. While working with commonplace motifs such as apples, stones, and even human beings, he employs extraordinary technical skill and a unique narrative style to unsettle viewers’ perceptions, creating a sensation of finding themselves in contact with a different plane of reality almost without realizing it.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1999, Amemiya has regularly presented solo exhibitions in Japan, primarily at SNOW Contemporary. He participated in “Reborn-Art Festival 2021-22” (Miyagi) and “Apple Cycle / Cosmic Seed” (Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori) in 2021. In 2023, he also participated in museum exhibitions across Japan, including “With the Soil: The World of ‘Agriculture’ in Art from Millet, Van Gogh, and Chu Asai to Contemporary Artists” at The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki. In 2024, he participated in art festivals such as “KOBE ROKKO MEETS ART 2024 beyond” (Mt. Rokko, Hyogo) and “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024” (Echigo-Tsumari, Niigata). That same year, he also presented the solo exhibition “Labonchi 02. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Which Has Not Yet Melted” (Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamanashi), followed by “Yosuke Amemiya | WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Art, which has not melted yet.” (WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo), which ran from 2024 to 2025. He has also presented his work overseas in cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, and Reykjavík, and has consistently been engaged in a wide range of artistic activities, including museums, art festivals, exhibitions, and performances, both in and outside of Japan.
In this exhibition, which marks Amemiya’s sixth solo show at SNOW Contemporary, he showcases short stories that intertwine his personal experiences, observations of the world, and local folklore through video and drawing. Amemiya has previously created site-specific works through fieldwork, engaging with the land, the memories, and folklore associated with it. In this exhibition, taking a collection of journals the artist has gradually written since 2014 as its starting point, his experiences in various locations within and out of Japan, along with thoughts that spontaneously came to his mind in daily life and reflections on truths about the world, emerge as individual stories. Real-life experiences, memories, imagination, and thoughts that float up and vanish like daydreams—as these elements overlap, a world takes shape that seems to belong neither entirely to a dream nor to waking reality.
In the video work, which is the main feature of this exhibition, the artist himself is shown arranging and layering drawings to the narration of the stories. This process is essentially a manifestation of the artist’s own thought process, where ideas are born, connect, surface, and then vanish. Furthermore, the drawings used in the video will be showcased within the physical space of the gallery, which creates a space where text, video, and drawings resonate with one another.
Real events, memories, or perhaps daydreams?
Through Amemiya’s words documented since 2014, along with the videos and drawings that take shape from them, a “flashback,” which could be described as Amemiya’s artistic journey, emerges, inviting viewers into a world of daydreams, suspended between reality and dreams.
A booklet compiling a collection of journals under the same title will also be published in conjunction with this exhibition. We cordially invite you to experience this exhibition, which drifts through the liminal space between narrative and reality, dreams and memory.
Yosuke Amemiya “Still Alive, Already a Flashback”
Artist Statement
For this exhibition, I have selected about 25 episodes from “Still Alive, Already a Flashback,” a series of texts I have been adding online every few years since 2014. The exhibition is planned to be a single-channel video version of “Still Alive, Already a Flashback,” combining spoken text with images drawn on paper. The following is an excerpt from the introductory text I wrote in 2014.
＊
The wisdom of our ancestors, who have lived with fish as food for generations: shinkeijime—“nerve-killing.” Like pulling the core from a charcoal pencil, shinkeijime extracts the nerves from within the bone marrow. It teaches us that the death of a living being does not happen all at once, but arrives in stages: brain death, bodily death, and nerve death. Caught in the fractions of a second between these deaths is an immense accumulation of images—something like the rush of a lifetime’s memories said to flash before one’s eyes at the moment of death.
For some reason, I can’t help but feel that the “flashback” I’ll see will be something utterly trivial. It won’t be my favorite movie, nor will I be gazing into the eyes of a girl in a painting I love. Instead, I imagine a completely out-of-place flashback rushing by—something like, “Hmm, this doesn’t have to happen right now, does it? Hey, wait—this really is the end, isn’t it?”—and that I’ll die laughing awkwardly to hide my embarrassment. Yeah, I think that’s a pretty nice way to go.
Two or three times a day, I find myself thinking, “Huh? Why did I just remember that?” I feel like I experience these “sudden arrivals of daydreams or something like flashbacks” a little more often than most people. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that, except for one time when I was 14, I don’t dream—or at least don’t remember my dreams. Since they come to me anyway, I try to catch them, but it’s difficult because these “suddenly arriving flashbacks” come completely out of context. Even when I’m lucky enough to be somewhere I can take notes, the moment I pick up my phone or something, they travel along the surface of the object and get absorbed somewhere. Apparently, flashbacks dissolve into matter rather easily.
I’m already well into middle age, but assuming I still have a little while before I have to face my own death head-on, I’m going to try to catch these daytime flashbacks that come to me like simulated moments on the verge of death. If, along the way, you feel like you’re losing track of what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading, just imagine that this is an image that’s come to you at the very end of your life, and hum to yourself, “Nah, it doesn’t really have to be this, does it?” I think that might help set the mood.
The tomb of the great artist Marcel Duchamp bears the inscription, “Besides, it’s always the others who die.”
This is also my modest response to that inscription, with both respect and frustration.
As practice for celebrating none other than my own death.
session：2026.9.19sat - 11.9sat 13:00 - 19:00
*closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary / 404 Hayano Bldg. 2-13-12 Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
opening reception : 2026.9.19sat 17:00 - 19:00
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present “Still Alive, Already a Flashback” by Yosuke Amemiya from September 19 (Saturday) to November 7 (Saturday), 2026.
Yosuke Amemiya was born in 1975 in Ibaraki, Japan. He completed his master’s degree at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2013. He subsequently worked primarily in Berlin for about 10 years before returning to Japan in 2022. He is currently based in Yamanashi and Tokyo.
Amemiya creates works using a wide range of media, including drawing, sculpture, performance, and VR. While working with commonplace motifs such as apples, stones, and even human beings, he employs extraordinary technical skill and a unique narrative style to unsettle viewers’ perceptions, creating a sensation of finding themselves in contact with a different plane of reality almost without realizing it.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1999, Amemiya has regularly presented solo exhibitions in Japan, primarily at SNOW Contemporary. He participated in “Reborn-Art Festival 2021-22” (Miyagi) and “Apple Cycle / Cosmic Seed” (Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori) in 2021. In 2023, he also participated in museum exhibitions across Japan, including “With the Soil: The World of ‘Agriculture’ in Art from Millet, Van Gogh, and Chu Asai to Contemporary Artists” at The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki. In 2024, he participated in art festivals such as “KOBE ROKKO MEETS ART 2024 beyond” (Mt. Rokko, Hyogo) and “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024” (Echigo-Tsumari, Niigata). That same year, he also presented the solo exhibition “Labonchi 02. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Which Has Not Yet Melted” (Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamanashi), followed by “Yosuke Amemiya | WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Art, which has not melted yet.” (WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo), which ran from 2024 to 2025. He has also presented his work overseas in cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, and Reykjavík, and has consistently been engaged in a wide range of artistic activities, including museums, art festivals, exhibitions, and performances, both in and outside of Japan.
In this exhibition, which marks Amemiya’s sixth solo show at SNOW Contemporary, he showcases short stories that intertwine his personal experiences, observations of the world, and local folklore through video and drawing. Amemiya has previously created site-specific works through fieldwork, engaging with the land, the memories, and folklore associated with it. In this exhibition, taking a collection of journals the artist has gradually written since 2014 as its starting point, his experiences in various locations within and out of Japan, along with thoughts that spontaneously came to his mind in daily life and reflections on truths about the world, emerge as individual stories. Real-life experiences, memories, imagination, and thoughts that float up and vanish like daydreams—as these elements overlap, a world takes shape that seems to belong neither entirely to a dream nor to waking reality.
In the video work, which is the main feature of this exhibition, the artist himself is shown arranging and layering drawings to the narration of the stories. This process is essentially a manifestation of the artist’s own thought process, where ideas are born, connect, surface, and then vanish. Furthermore, the drawings used in the video will be showcased within the physical space of the gallery, which creates a space where text, video, and drawings resonate with one another.
Real events, memories, or perhaps daydreams?
Through Amemiya’s words documented since 2014, along with the videos and drawings that take shape from them, a “flashback,” which could be described as Amemiya’s artistic journey, emerges, inviting viewers into a world of daydreams, suspended between reality and dreams.
A booklet compiling a collection of journals under the same title will also be published in conjunction with this exhibition. We cordially invite you to experience this exhibition, which drifts through the liminal space between narrative and reality, dreams and memory.
Yosuke Amemiya “Still Alive, Already a Flashback”
Artist Statement
For this exhibition, I have selected about 25 episodes from “Still Alive, Already a Flashback,” a series of texts I have been adding online every few years since 2014. The exhibition is planned to be a single-channel video version of “Still Alive, Already a Flashback,” combining spoken text with images drawn on paper. The following is an excerpt from the introductory text I wrote in 2014.
＊
The wisdom of our ancestors, who have lived with fish as food for generations: shinkeijime—“nerve-killing.” Like pulling the core from a charcoal pencil, shinkeijime extracts the nerves from within the bone marrow. It teaches us that the death of a living being does not happen all at once, but arrives in stages: brain death, bodily death, and nerve death. Caught in the fractions of a second between these deaths is an immense accumulation of images—something like the rush of a lifetime’s memories said to flash before one’s eyes at the moment of death.
For some reason, I can’t help but feel that the “flashback” I’ll see will be something utterly trivial. It won’t be my favorite movie, nor will I be gazing into the eyes of a girl in a painting I love. Instead, I imagine a completely out-of-place flashback rushing by—something like, “Hmm, this doesn’t have to happen right now, does it? Hey, wait—this really is the end, isn’t it?”—and that I’ll die laughing awkwardly to hide my embarrassment. Yeah, I think that’s a pretty nice way to go.
Two or three times a day, I find myself thinking, “Huh? Why did I just remember that?” I feel like I experience these “sudden arrivals of daydreams or something like flashbacks” a little more often than most people. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that, except for one time when I was 14, I don’t dream—or at least don’t remember my dreams. Since they come to me anyway, I try to catch them, but it’s difficult because these “suddenly arriving flashbacks” come completely out of context. Even when I’m lucky enough to be somewhere I can take notes, the moment I pick up my phone or something, they travel along the surface of the object and get absorbed somewhere. Apparently, flashbacks dissolve into matter rather easily.
I’m already well into middle age, but assuming I still have a little while before I have to face my own death head-on, I’m going to try to catch these daytime flashbacks that come to me like simulated moments on the verge of death. If, along the way, you feel like you’re losing track of what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading, just imagine that this is an image that’s come to you at the very end of your life, and hum to yourself, “Nah, it doesn’t really have to be this, does it?” I think that might help set the mood.
The tomb of the great artist Marcel Duchamp bears the inscription, “Besides, it’s always the others who die.”
This is also my modest response to that inscription, with both respect and frustration.
As practice for celebrating none other than my own death.
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