This is the time of year when the city is dazzling and spirits are high. The Strike Gold title reflects our hope that visitors will gain a new perspective and have an exciting experience when faced with unfamiliar forms of personal expression.

There is one topic that I would like to broach at the very outset. This is the fact that we can no longer be blind to the contradiction between highlighting the exceptional talents among people with disabilities on the one hand and conveying the “preciousness of all life” on the other. Torn between the two, we began to try farming as a means of confronting the “all life” that cannot be fulfilled by art alone. Even so, I have learned that "expressing oneself" is sometimes as important as life and death.

This exhibition is the fifth edition in a continuing series at GYRE that began in 2017. I hope that this will be an opportunity to contemplate the social destiny and artistic value that is inherent to these works.

At the same time, the No Concept in the subtitle is a phrase that symbolizes outsider art (expression that does not fit within the existing framework), which we have been supporting since 2021. In contemporary art, the emphasis is on “concept,” as in “artist intent,” but this conventional thinking misses the mark when it comes to outsider art.

In Japan, eliminating artifice—at least to the extent possible—has been considered the essence of true beauty. The Jomon pottery in which Taro Okamoto found artistic value, the Ido chawan (tea bowls) that Sen no Rikyu prized for their unique beauty, and the Korean tableware beloved by Soetsu Yanagi: these all have an alluring lack of artifice. Zeami also talks about the difficulty of reaching a state of mindlessness (“mushin”) and the devices required to do so.