IKUMI KAKIHARA’S NEW WORKS, NOW ON VIEW: “A CAT HAS NINE LIVES”

IN TOKYO, AN ARTIST PRESENTS PAINTINGS AND OBJECTS FILLED WITH PUNK-SURREAL SPIRIT AND A WRY SENSE OF HUMOR

Published on December 17, 2025

“A Cat Has Nine Lives: Ikumi Kakihara Solo Exhibition”
Colony Minami Aoyama
Minami Aoyama 6-3-7
Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062
December 11 through 21, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

TOKYO — It was the red that did it, a super-red that lured us to the gallery — a luminous scarlet that appeared in the photos the Japanese artist Ikumi Kakihara recently posted on her Instagram account (@ikumikakihara) and that turned out to be even more powerful and sumptuous when seen in person.

It’s the dominant color in evidence in her current solo exhibition at Colony Minami Aoyama in Tokyo. In fact, beside the black or white of a few objects on display that the artist has embellished with her chosen power red, it’s her current group of artworks’ only color.

Ikumi Kakihara, “LOVE YOU,” 2025, a painting in acrylic on canvas measuring two meters high by five meters wide, now on view in the gallery exhibition “A Cat Has Nine Lives.” Photo by Edward M. Gómez

The young, Tokyo-based artist hails from a town in the Kansai region in the south-central part of Honshu, the largest island in the Japanese archipelago. Interested in art since an early age — as a child, she liked to draw — and inspired by hardcore music and the general punk aesthetic, after moving to Tokyo several years ago, Kakihara began exploring some new art-making ideas.