Yamauchi Shota

Yamauchi Shota

Born in 1992, based in Tokyo, Japan.Yamauchi graduated with an MFA in New Media from the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media in 2016. His latest solo exhibitions include MAM Project 030 x MAM Digital:Yamauchi Shota (Tokyo, 2022), Where is EIZO-ZIMA going? Where are we going¿ (Taipei,2022) and Medium and Dimension: Apparition (Tokyo, 2023); along with group show participation in Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions (Tokyo, 2019), D.T. Suzuki: Life= Zen=Art (Tokyo, 2022), and Ars Electronica Festival 2022 (Linz, Austria, 2022). Recipient of the TERRADA ART AWARD 2021 Kaneshima Takahiro and Audience Awards, and an Excellence Award in the Art Division of the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival (2022).

Artworks

The Crystal World

2024


Video installation


8’29”

The Crystal World by Shota Yamauchi offers a fresh perspective on J.G. Ballard’s mystical and speculative novel bearing the same title. Centered on the “Golden Mean,” it symbolizes a state of equilibrium that transcends opposing forces such as life and death or stillness and motion.

The 3D computer graphics in this work depict the story of the world’s beginning and end. Similar to our reality, seemingly unrelated events transform and interrelate, creating a grand cycle. Whereas J.G. Ballard’s vision of forests and human bodies adorned with crystals in suspended animation—neither alive nor dead—redefines happiness, Shota Yamauchi shifts the focus from traditional notions of wealth and prosperity symbolized by “gold” to an exploration of happiness through a more measured appraisal of its value. The theme revolves around finding contentment not in pursuing material wealth but in the equilibrium and harmony it embodies.