Keita Morimoto's solo exhibition "what we told ourselves" at Kotaro Nukaga gallery in Tokyo presented a series of nocturnal paintings and new sculptural works exploring artificial light in urban environments. The show featured large-scale canvases depicting uncanny, dramatically lit cityscapes alongside life-sized, internally illuminated vending machine sculptures that extended his painterly themes into three dimensions.
Morimoto's work matters for its fusion of Baroque chiaroscuro techniques with contemporary Japanese urban imagery, creating a distinct visual language that transforms banal city fixtures into protagonists. His recent turn to sculpture, creating immersive environments where light appears to animate both objects and figures, marks a significant evolution in his practice and contributes to contemporary dialogues on painting, perception, and the constructed nature of reality.