• ART BASEL UNLIMITED 2026 | Yuichi Hirako

    On View from 16 to 21 June, 2026, 
    Located at Messe Basel, Hall 1 |  U49

     

    GALLERY BATON proudly presents TREE, FOREST, MOUNTAIN (2025) by YUICHI HIRAKO at ART BASEL UNLIMITED 2026

  • Yuichi Hirako, Tree, Forest, Mountain, 2025

    Yuichi Hirako

    Tree, Forest, Mountain, 2025
    acrylic on wood
    210 x 510 x 415 cm
  • Tree, Forest, Mountain (2025) by Yuichi Hirako for Art Basel Unlimited 2026 is a sculptural installation of 304 hybrid figures...
    Tree, Forest, Mountain (2025) by Yuichi Hirako for Art Basel Unlimited 2026  is a sculptural installation of 304 hybrid figures – human bodies crowned with fir or pine tree heads – densely clustered on a circular platform as though a fragment of forest has broken free. They commonly referred to as “Tree Men,” inspired by the peaks of a forest canopy. When exhibited in Okayama Museum of Art last fall, the artist’s hometown, the work was widely acclaimed for its bold reinterpretation of the forest through a distinctly Japanese subcultural lens, revealing its layered dimensions as a site of nature, mythology, collectivity, and anonymity.
  • The overwhelming scale of the sculptural ensemble immerses viewers in an environment that evokes being surrounded by nature, while simultaneously...
    The overwhelming scale of the sculptural ensemble immerses viewers in an environment that evokes being surrounded by nature, while simultaneously repositioning them from observers to the observed. In this spatial configuration, nature ceases to function as an object of contemplation and instead operates as a structure of surveillance—one that reflects human presence and behavior back onto itself.
     
    By inverting the conventional relationship between humans and nature—where nature is persistently treated as a resource to be consumed and exploited in contemporary society—Hirako subtly reactivates the long-familiar discourse of coexistence. Rather than presenting coexistence as a moral ideal, his work renders it a sensory and spatial experience, exposing both its possibility and its imbalance, and quietly posing ethical questions about how humanity continues to position itself in relation to the natural world.
  • “How we interact with nature and how we think about it is very different from a hundred years ago. It...

     

     

     

    “How we interact with nature and how we think about it is very different from a hundred years ago. It will be different a hundred years from now and that’s natural, so I make work considering the changes that will come."

    - YUICHI HIRAKO

  • YUICHI HIRAKO (JAPAN, B. 1982)

  • Yuichi Hirako has been exploring the coexistence and interdependent relationship between nature, flora, fauna, and humans with his styles full of metaphors and symbols. Through the hybrid character, he utilizes the diverse qualities of painting, sculpture and installation to create a three-dimensional representation of the unique themes behind his work.

     

    Born and raised in Okayama Prefecture in Japan, a prefecture with a rich natural environment, he began to realize during his time at university in London that the main reason for urban green spaces and interior plants was to provide human comfort. He became conscious of the question of whether it was their fate to be transplanted into artificial places, subjected to basic growth controls, and then die out. He developed this into the central theme that underpins his work.

     

    The central plot of his work is that a human-like character lives a nomadic existence in a forest on the other side of the world, living in symbiosis with other sub-features including cats and dogs. Deploying these characters plays a key role in multiplying the work's complex narrative, building detailed storylines that diverge in layers from the central theme. When the group of artists presenting character-based paintings is attracting considerable attention in this contemporary era, Hirako’s practice manages to obtain its singularity as he not only organically combines classical art with formal aesthetics and structural mechanism of the current media art but internalizes them.

     

    Yuichi Hirako lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. He received a BFA from Wimbledon College of Art in London. He has held solo exhibitions at numerous museums, including Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art (2025), Keelung Museum of Art (2025), Nagi MOCA (2024), Hermès Hong Kong’s landmark Prince Store Flagship (2023), Space K Seoul (2023), Nerima Art Museum (2022) and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2018). While he has solo exhibitions with Gallery Baton since 2021, his work has been featured in exhibition in Long Museum (2024), Powerlong Museum (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2010), Ueno Royal Museum (2013), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2010) as well.His works are included in the collections of the Lisser Art Museum, the AkzoNovel Art Foundation, the Jean Pigozzi Collection, Space K Seoul and more.

      

    Selected Solo Exhibitions 

     

    2025 

    Origin, Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, JP

    Beyond the Ideal Landscape, Keelung Museum of Art, Keelung, TW

     

    2024   

    Ideal Landscape, Nagi MOCA, Okayama, JP 
    New Home, Gallery Baton, Seoul, KR

     

    2023   

    Journey, Space K, Seoul, KR


    2022   

    Inheritance, Metamorphosis, Rebirth, Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo, JP

     

    2021   

    Mount Mariana, Gallery Baton, Seoul, KR 

     


    Selected Collections

    Space K, KR
    Parkseobo Foundation, KR 
    Lisser Art Museum (The Van den Broek Foundation), NL
    Akzonovel Art Foundation, NL
    Jean Pigozzi Collection, CH
    The Dai-ichi Life Holding, Inc., JP
    By Art Matters, CN
    Modern Media, CN