I am pleased to announce my upcoming solo exhibition “Slightly Elsewhere” at Polka Galerie in Paris, on view from 23 January to 21 February 2026.

 

We see, but we don’t perceive.

Slightly Elsewhere begins with a condition of contemporary vision.

In an era defined by the relentless circulation of images, visibility no longer guarantees perception. What is overwhelmingly present can become psychically neutralized—absorbed into collective consciousness without being truly experienced. Rather than producing more images of reality, Okahara interrogates the conditions under which reality becomes perceptually anesthetized.

Each work is produced on washi paper handmade by the artist and coated manually with silver gelatin emulsion. By reintroducing duration, bodily labor, and contingency into a medium historically structured around mechanical reproducibility, the image emerges not as stable information but as unstable material. Fibers disperse light, tonal values shift, and the image refuses total resolution. By destabilizing clarity, Okahara questions the inherited authority of the medium. The viewer is no longer positioned as a passive receiver of information but as an active participant in the construction of meaning.

Rather than treating photography as a transparent conduit of memory, Okahara reclaims it as a “resistant object”—a resistance against the assumption that to see is to know, and a refusal of the promise that information can secure the act of perception.

The series Slightly Elsewhere includes monumental structures and sites marked by historical traces—places undeniably present, yet often receding into the background of recognition. The work materializes the fragile distance between seeing and perceiving.

In doing so, Slightly Elsewhere situates itself within contemporary debates on materiality, reproducibility, and the politics of perception—while insisting on something increasingly rare in the age of infinite images: embodied attention.

Hand-crafted Washi & Large-scale Prints

Because every step of the process is manual, no two works can ever be identical.

The exhibition includes multiple unique prints, among them a monumental 3.2-meter washi piece created specifically for this series. The materiality of each print becomes inseparable from the act of encountering it in person.

Exhibition Information

Title: Slightly Elsewhere — Solo Exhibition
Venue: Polka Galerie, Paris
Dates: 23 January – 21 February 2026
Opening: 22 January 2026, 6pm
Addresse: Cour de Venise, 12 Rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris, France