Yuichi Higashionna / Family Resemblance
¥6,300
Size : 225x300x25mm
Contents : 114p
Print : Offset
Edition : 500 copies (numbered, original order)
Design : ori.studio
Language : English, Japanese
Publisher : ori.studio
Date : 2025.11.21
ISBN 978-1-0688196-2-9
About :
Exaggerated motifs, patterns, and textures transplanted without context—artificial, dull and lifeless bulbs emitting an unnaturally bright light, and striking colors which appear as unique entities in themselves—these are just some of the attributes associated with “Fanshii”, a Japanese term roughly equivalent to “kitsch” or “tacky”. “Fanshii” elements defined the mid-20th century interiors of Japanese homes in their sense of materiality, growing from an admiration for Western culture, though they are not purely Western nor Japanese. Instead, the Japanese artist Yuichi Higashionna perceives them as being “uncanny” or “unheimlich”, something that at first appears familiar but carries a sense of discomfort or even dread, and this hybrid state of being has defined his eclectic and varied work, which extends this phenomenon of the familiar becoming unfamiliar towards a new realm of being.
Incorporating 262 images from Higashionna’s personal archive—including completed work, exhibitions, process images, and drawings, this book, Family Resemblance, attempts to enter into its own physical state of “uncanniness” while drawing lines and connections that visualize how Higashionna’s vast, wide-ranging oeuvre is interconnected by a series of mutation-like relationships. Constructed out of two halves which are staple bound together at a slight angle, the book is initially turned inside-out so that readers are first confronted by the back cover, twisting the archetypical book form just enough so that it departs from its state of calmness into a kind of animistic “unheimlich”. The work, printed at the same slightly off-putting angle as the book is bound, is organized through perceived relationships rather than chronologically or by category. Balls made up of fluorescent bulbs mutate into balls made up of mirrors reflecting lines, mutating into those same lines pasted onto walls. From beginning to end, this shifting and transforming logic, a kind of subconscious network from which the output grows and develops, is illustrated and defined.
Essays by art writer Chie Sumiyoshi, philosopher Masaya Chiba, and architect Kadowaki Kozo add three unique perspectives to the ideas surrounding Higashionna’s practice and the uncanny, and how they are profoundly intertwined.