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Adams and Ollman
Artists, Exhibitions, Fairs, Exchange, Gallery

On a very quiet morning, on the same piece of toast: Noriko Kawana, Nao Kikuchi, Hikari Ono
Curated by Kenji Ide
May 17–June 14, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 17 from 3–5pm


Adams and Ollman is pleased to present On a very quiet morning, on the same piece of toast, featuring new sculptural works composed of ceramic, wood, and metal by Japanese artists Noriko Kawana (b. 1988, Iwate, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan), Nao Kikuchi (b. 1988, Tochigi, Japan; lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany), and Hikari Ono (b. 1990, Lüneburg, Germany; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan). The exhibition is curated by artist Kenji Ide, whose show, American Friend, was on view at Adams and Ollman in January 2024. For this exhibition, Ide brings together three artists who share common interests in gesture, space, and architecture, and an aesthetic that is minimal, intimate, and haptic. In particular, the artists approach object-making through their hands, which act as a conduit between the internal and physical worlds.

Of the exhibition, Ide noted, "I consider this sense of touch to be a very important part of Japanese art. It is from there that small differences emerge, resulting in unique forms of expression...[the] artists in this exhibition have each created a completely different and unique approach to their work, even though they each have overlapping ideas." This is partly due, in the case of Kawana, Kikuchi, and Ono, to the fact that the artists shared studio space for a period of time. "The studio was laid out in a very organic way, with no firm separation between each artist's production space. We were very close to each other, so that if we had a conversation, it would affect each other's workspace," Ide said. 

Hikari Ono makes sculptures that collapse the formal languages of sculpture and painting. Often starting with a rectangular slab of clay, Ono enacts a series of interventions on and into this tactile surface that then functions like pictorial space. In this series of works, "Object for Painting," Ono scratches, imprints, or draws into the surface, leaving a mark or trace of the body in action. Deep indentations, such as those that appear in Object for Painting No.121, reference the heft or speed of a brushstroke, while the endless, layered stanzas of Object for Painting (tail, teil, terre #1) and Object for Painting (tail, teil, terre #2) function like drawn lines using gravity in the gallery space.

Nao Kikuchi isolates elements from the built environment into abstract and stylized architectural glyphs or remnants. Her small-scale ceramic works reference her own memories and experiences of extant places, such as the shape of a room, a tile floor, a staircase, or a cloister of windows. Complex layers of color, texture, and referential form reinterpret and renegotiate the artist's experience of the urban landscape as "a way of marking my physical presence, as if pinning my footsteps onto a map." 

Noriko Kawana's delicate sculptures combine simple forms such as lines, rectangles, and circles into complex arrangements that reference systems, language, anatomy, and tools of measurement and calculation. Constructed primarily of wood and urushi, a type of lacquer derived from the sap of the urushi tree, Kawana's assemblages call to mind techno-biological body parts or machines, using anatomical and mechanical motifs to consider our lived experience as bodies with the systems, tools, and patterns we construct. abacus (side view) and abacus (pace), for instance, draw connections between the intricate patterns of their namesake and the body's intricate metabolic processes necessary to sustain life. Untitled (ear) instantiates neurons, seed pods, microorganisms, and organizational flow charts to draw attention to formal and perhaps functional relationships between various growth patterns.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS AND CURATOR

Noriko Kawana (b. 1988, Iwate, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan) earned a BFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan in 2012. Her work has been shown at AKIBATAMABI21, second 2., and TANA Studio, all Tokyo, Japan, amongst other venues.

Nao Kikuchi (b. 1988, Tochigi, Japan, lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany) earned an MFA in 2013 and a BFA in 2011 from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany, from 2020 to 2023. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse, France; Galerie Crone, Vienna, Austria; POLA Museum Annex, Tokyo, Japan; Kunstverein FABRIKculture, Hégenheim, France; and Kunst Raum, Riehen, Switzerland, among others venues.

Hikari Ono (b. 1990, Lüneburg, Germany, lives and works in Tokyo, Japan) earned a BFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan in 2014. Her work has been included in exhibitions at The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Kurumaya Museum Ogawa House, Tochigi, Japan; and The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan, among other venues.

Kenji Ide (b. 1981, Yokosuka, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.) earned an MFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan in 2006. He has had solo exhibitions at Wschód Gallery and the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature, both Warsaw, Poland; Adams and Ollman and the Portland Japanese Garden, both Portland, Oregon; KAYOKOYUKI and GOYA Curtain, both Tokyo, Japan, amongst other venues. His works has been included in group exhibitions at Société, Berlin, Germany; Laurel Gitlen, New York, NY; Crèvecœur, Paris, France; Guimarães, Vienna, Austria; and Art Center Ongoin and XYZ Collective, both Tokyo, Japan. Ide's work is in the permanent collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR.