HOSOO GALLERY is pleased to present the Japan premiere of the new Hemispheres Collection, a set of textiles created in collaboration with the Milan-based architecture and design firm DIMORESTUDIO. Building on the previous presentation of this collection at the Milan Design Week in April 2025, the exhibition will feature three newly produced screens, a fusion of traditional Nishijin textile designs and Italian decorative sensibilities.

The exhibition title, “The Hemispheres,” derives from the ancient Greek word for “two halves of the globe,” summing up the idea that pairs of different values—East and West, traditional and modern, static and dynamic—complement each other to form a single world. At the core of the collection is the archive of approximately 20,000 obi designs passed down in the HOSOO workshop. A significant proportion of these designs are “atari,” or deliberately uncolored drawings intended to ensure the longevity of the patterns by enabling their utilization across multiple generations. It is arguably this matrix, untouched by pigment, that enables the unique creative process of Nishijin textile, in which artisans from different generations and periods make their own contributions toward perfection. For the Hemispheres Collection, DIMORESTUDIO engaged in a creative experiment, exploring the application of contemporary colors to unfinished designs that have been meticulously archived by HOSOO over the course of numerous years.

This exhibition is the Japan premiere of the Hemispheres Collection, accompanied by a special display of late-Edo period “Longevity Screens” that belong to the Hosoo family. This latter is a pair of two folding screens, each composed of six panels, with 128 strips of fabric in various sizes pasted on them. Nishijin has long had a custom of collecting fragments of Noh costumes, obi fabrics, and imported textiles, and pasting them on a support as a memento or record. Known as harimaze byōbu, or collage screens, they are much more than mere furnishings. These objects also serve as highly valuable archives of Nishijin textile’s history. Taking cue from this established format, the present exhibition configures the Hemispheres Collection as a set of screens, featuring one harimaze byōbu.

“The Hemispheres” aims to illustrate the convergence of inherited tradition and modern creativity, examining a point of intersection beyond the established East/West dichotomy. Through this exhibition, HOSOO hopes to open a novel horizon for contemporary creation, while elucidating the function of textile as a medium that chronicles its long history.