Participating Artist
Curated by
Matt Jay
In Kenji Ide’s installation, A Poem of Perception, the Kanagawa-based artist has created a constellation of found objects and small-scale sculptures that encourage viewers to heighten their sensitivity to their own experience of time, place, and imagination. Created specifically for the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery, Ide’s art engages in a spiritual dialogue with the context of its surroundings. His work mirrors a Japanese garden’s elemental foundation of natural materials shaped by human hands and reflects its aesthetic ideals, expressed through the careful arrangement of objects and empty space. This deep consideration of space echoes Garden of Resonance: The Art of Jun Kaneko, an art exhibition simultaneously on display at Portland Japanese Garden.
Ide’s sculptures of carved wood, paper, and concrete, combined with found postcards and ephemera such as stones and fallen foliage, can be thought of as a kind of material poetry—each element’s form creates the shape of the poem, their placement in space creating its rhythm. For this exhibition, Ide has labored to remove the focus of his work on sculptures as individual entities, instead reconceptualizing each piece within a holistic installation.
Ide is interested in the passage of time, both for the weight it carries in our everyday lives, but also for its connection to the experience of a Japanese garden. Drawing inspiration from his belief in the beauty of everyday life—the materials in Ide’s work are familiar and commonplace, creating an accessible visual language that is quietly powerful in its emotional familiarity. For example, Ide views the postcards incorporated into his installation as antiquated sculptures of communication. Unlike today’s digital messages, postcards have their own unique shape, weight, and color. They possess a physicality that people can project their own emotions or experiences onto. As physical objects that must travel through time and space to reach their recipients, postcards foster contemplative dialogue across distances.
Interview with
Kenji Ide
Kenji Ide talks about his working partnership and creative process with curator Matt Jay in the making of the ground-breaking exhibition, A Poem of Perception at the Tanabe Gallery in the Portland Japanese Garden.
Interview with
Portland Japanese Gardens
The Concept of “A Poem of Perception” exhibition with Aki Nakanishi, Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education. Portland Japanese Garden.
Along with, Steve Bloom, the CEO of the Portland Japanese Garden speaks about his relationship with Matt Jay and why he was invited to be a curator of young emerging artists for the garden and its new Japan Institute.
A Poem of Perception
Limited Edition Book
This 281 page book with matte silver cover signed by the artist is available as a deluxe collectible in a hand crafted wood box with 2 original photographs, edition of 5. The book documents the entire artistic process of this extraordinary exhibition from the original presentation of concept by curator, Matt Jay and the background of the artist, Kenji Ide. It features 100 pages of the actual email exchange between the artist in Tokyo and curator in Portland. Conceived and produced during the pandemic, the team successfully mounted this breakthrough exhibition solely through digital communications. Two beautiful spreads of the key sculptures open as a gatefold to complete the presentation.