Encountering Objects Outside the Exhibition Room

Are you familiar with the stairwell area inside the Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo, Mita Campus East Annex)? If you travel to the exhibition rooms via elevator, you might not notice it, but there is actually a grand staircase connecting the first through third floors. It is an open space where large windows spanning two stories bring the campus scenery into the building.

A single display stand is set up in that space. Inside is a single rose. You will immediately notice it is an artificial flower. While one could say a rose is arranged in a cup, the glass object we would normally recognize as a "cup" is used upside down and is broken. Furthermore, the volume of what would be the inside of the cup is made of plaster. Depending on the indoor lighting or the shifting outdoor light, the edges of the chipped glass catch the light, strengthening its presence despite much of it being lost. This is the work " Dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire" by contemporary artist Kazuo Okazaki (1930–2022).

In 2025, KeMCo launched a new exhibition project using this stairwell area. This exhibition, consisting of the minimal elements of space, a display stand, and a work of art, is titled "Casual Scenery." For the first installment, the works of Kazuo Okazaki—who developed his practice starting from the inside of objects since the 1960s—are being displayed one by one across four phases (Phase 3 runs until August 6). This small exhibition series was planned with the hope that visitors would have the opportunity to encounter the objects themselves, whether they are part of the university collection or items that came to KeMCo through some other connection. Diverse objects gather at the university from various contexts, but not all of them can be fully introduced within exhibition projects where they are arranged according to a specific story. In that sense, the aim is to provide a glimpse into the richness of the relationship between the university and its objects.

This series holds the potential for any kind of object to appear—not just art exhibitions, but also research materials or even various tools. We hope you will visit the staircase when you stop by KeMCo to see what kind of encounters await in the future.

(Shiho Hasegawa, Staff Member, Keio Museum Commons)