This January, as Singapore Art Week unfolds across the city, a quieter yet deeply resonant moment will take place in Tai Seng. Motif, the first Singapore exhibition by Japanese artist Keiko Moriuchi, opens on 17 January at TOKONOMA—offering an intimate encounter with one of the last living members of the legendary Gutai Art Association.

At 83, Moriuchi remains a radical. She was the final artist inducted into Gutai and the only member personally recruited by its founder, Jirō Yoshihara. More than half a century later, her work continues to probe the same essential question that has guided her life’s practice: how do we see—and understand—the universe?

Presented by Art Again, Motif marks the gallery’s first exhibition staged during Singapore Art Week. Featuring fourteen new works created especially for this presentation, the show introduces Moriuchi’s singular visual language to Singapore audiences for the very first time.

Born in Osaka in 1943, Moriuchi’s artistic path was shaped early by a pivotal year in New York in 1965. There, she encountered leading figures of the international avant-garde, including Ad Reinhardt and Isamu Noguchi. The experience sharpened her experimental instincts and affirmed her belief that art could operate beyond aesthetics—as a tool for inquiry, perception, and truth.

She joined Gutai in 1968, becoming part of the groundbreaking postwar movement that redefined Japanese contemporary art through physicality, material experimentation, and an uncompromising belief in originality. Moriuchi remained an active member until the group dissolved in 1972, carrying its spirit of fearless exploration into her own independent practice.

Moriuchi’s work is instantly recognisable. Her canvases are richly layered, tactile, and almost sculptural, built through meticulous applications of gold leaf. But the materials are never merely decorative. For Moriuchi, gold is both a philosophical and perceptual device.

“Gold is the universe’s prescription,” she says. “When you gaze upon the universe, you need gold-rimmed glasses, or rather, gold eye drops. Without them, you can’t see the universe.”

That belief finds a natural home at TOKONOMA, a cultural project space designed for contemplation rather than spectacle. The gallery’s white walls create a striking contrast against shimmering gold surfaces, allowing each work to breathe. As daylight shifts throughout the day, the gold leaf responds subtly to light and air, making each visit feel slightly different from the last.

Anchoring the exhibition is a shrine-like plinth that reflects Moriuchi’s Buddhist beliefs, reinforcing the sense that this is not simply an art display, but a meditative environment.

The exhibition title, Motif, speaks to Moriuchi’s belief in shared imagination across disciplines. “Humans can’t conjure that imagination without contemplating the universe,” she explains. “That imagination randomly surfaces in artists, scientists, religious scholars, ideas like ‘the universe must be like this.’ That’s the etymology of the word ‘motif.’”

Several bodies of work come together in this presentation, each reflecting Moriuchi’s lifelong fascination with cosmic order and continuity. Central to the exhibition is her Lu: The Never-Ending Thread series, where horizontal lines stretch endlessly across the canvas, like threads extending into space. These lines reach toward prime-number coordinates—symbols of the universe’s most fundamental structures.

Other works draw from ancient mythology and Eastern philosophy. Donut Peach merges the Eastern symbol of immortality with the Poincaré Conjecture, a famously complex mathematical problem. Dragons in Eternal Circle depicts three dragons biting one another’s tails: an ancient Chinese image of heaven, earth, and humanity bound in perpetual motion. Together, the works form a quiet but powerful meditation on expansion, connection, and truth.

Despite frequent references to her age, Moriuchi herself rejects conventional notions of time. “I don’t want to say, ‘I’m eighty-three because that’s the number from my birth date,’” she says. “For me, right now, this moment is being born. Every day is a birth.”

That philosophy permeates her practice. She does not view her works as isolated objects, but as fragments of a single, ongoing investigation into the nature of existence. Seen in this light, Motif feels less like a retrospective moment and more like a continuation—another thread in a practice that has spanned six decades and remains vibrantly alive.

Running for just two weeks, Motif offers a rare opportunity to experience the work of a pivotal figure in Japanese postwar art—one whose practice bridges Gutai’s radical experimentation with contemporary spiritual and philosophical concerns.

For Art Again, the exhibition represents a meaningful expansion beyond the resale art market, supporting a primary artistic voice and bringing Moriuchi’s work into direct conversation with Southeast Asian audiences during one of Asia’s most significant art weeks. And for visitors, it offers something rarer still: a space to slow down, look closely, and contemplate the vastness of the universe rendered in gold.

Motif by Keiko Moriuchi runs from 17th January to 1st February 2026 at TOKONOMA, 16 Shaw Road, #03-10, Singapore 367954. Pricelist and catalogue available here