Inside the New Wave of Japanese Conceptual Art

There is a room in a former textile factory in Kyoto where the walls breathe. Not metaphorically. The installation — a collaboration between artist collective Void Bureau and a team of material scientists from Keio University — uses pressure-sensitive membranes embedded with mycelium networks to create a surface that responds to human presence. Stand close enough and the wall exhales.

This is not the Japan of cherry blossoms and minimalism that the West has been selling back to itself for decades. This is something rawer, stranger, and considerably more interesting.