Kenji Ide: The time of a shadow

Matthew Brown is pleased to announce The time of a shadow, a solo exhibition of new sculptures by the Japanese artist Kenji Ide. This is Ide’s first exhibition with the gallery and his first in Los Angeles. 

Ide’s sculptural practice centers on the construction of discrete wooden forms that give material presence to abstract motifs. In The time of a shadow, Ide explores the dual nature of perception and the self. He proposes that the mind is not an indeterminate, fluid space, but rather a structure with two distinct sides: front and back, visible and unseen. Describing this split as “an inevitable consequence of the process of perception,” Ide turns his attention to the reverse side—the part of the self that one cannot recognize firsthand. 

The sculptures in the exhibition are based on poetic phrases or abstract prompts authored by Ide to describe these shadow states. Among them: A plane where only objects exist; The back of a head, or the stretch of a riverbank as a metaphor for memory; The perceived volume of the mind rendered as emptiness; and What is seen in complete darkness. These fragments serve as conceptual armatures for the sculptures—objects that feel as if they belong to an unfamiliar stage set or philosophical landscape. 

Arranged on a low, platform-like pedestal designed by the artist, the sculptures recall the visual language of Japanese noh theater—spare, abstract, and intuitive. While small in scale, each object plays a role in a broader, non-narrative environment where meaning accumulates slowly and indirectly. 

The site of the exhibition, Los Angeles, is also considered. Ide describes the city as a place rooted in its concrete and material image, and “so rational you can’t feel the shadow of naivety.” In contrast, The time of a shadow introduces an ambiguous, introspective counterpoint. Through subtle shifts in form and placement, the exhibition invites viewers into a space that resists fixed interpretation—one that gestures instead toward the contours of memory, inner life, and perception’s outer edges.