MEDEL GALLERY SHU HIBIYA is pleased to present “Finally, We Caught the Sun”, a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Akira Fujimoto, on view from March 6 to March 24.

Fujimoto completed his graduate studies at Tokyo University of the Arts and is an emerging artist whose practice centers on environmental and social phenomena rooted in energy. Through painting, installation, and large-scale art projects, he explores the structures and narratives surrounding energy in contemporary society. Since 2015, he has also been widely recognized as the founder of “Sono Aida,” an initiative that activates urban interstitial spaces as platforms for artistic practice.

In this exhibition, “Finally, We Caught the Sun,” Fujimoto re-edits and reconfigures past works together with his ongoing painting series Perpetual Energy, which takes the motif of a perpetual motion machine—symbolizing the expansion of energy. Drawing from years of artistic activity and social engagement, the exhibition uses ineffable disjunctions and residues—those elements that resist language—as its conceptual material.

The exhibition title is excerpted from a 1954 book serialized in a Yomiuri Shimbun editorial column: Finally, We Caught the Sun – Will Nuclear Power Bring Happiness to Humanity? The book promoted the peaceful use of nuclear energy as a path toward human prosperity. Behind this narrative lay the American propaganda campaign “Atoms for Peace” under the Eisenhower administration, which sought to transform nuclear power from a “weapon of fear” into a “friend of humanity.” Disney’s educational television program and publication Our Friend the Atom became symbolic of this effort.

In Japan, although not overt propaganda, works such as Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy reflected an era of technological optimism in which the peaceful use of nuclear power became embedded in the cultural imagination. Despite lingering memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the introduction of nuclear energy was positioned as an unavoidable national strategy. The 1970 Osaka Expo functioned as a monumental narrative device for nuclear optimism, redefining atomic energy from “weapon” to “hope.” Within that celebratory framework, Taro Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun subtly introduced an element of unease, preventing the vision of a radiant future from appearing entirely false. Ironically, this grand narrative was completed decades later by the unforeseen reality of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. While the story of energy is not solely tragic, we inevitably participate in it with both expectation and anxiety.

Energy—whether derived from fossil fuels, nuclear power, or renewable sources—is fundamentally the transformation of solar energy for human purposes. Invisible, yet constantly mobilized, consumed, and dissipated, energy has shaped wars, environmental crises, and geopolitical ambitions since the Industrial Revolution. The way societies handle energy reflects the spirit and contradictions of each era.

Fujimoto has long been fascinated by the social phenomena and human impulses that surround this foundational infrastructure. Through repeated projects, his thinking has evolved. In this exhibition, he translates these accumulated reflections into color, form, and color fields, giving visual expression to intangible displacements and residual traces. Centered on the Perpetual Energy series, the works are curated in dialogue with earlier pieces to construct a layered meditation on expansion, belief, and consequence.

In every era, we can only believe that we have “finally caught the sun.” Whether that belief was justified can only be judged in hindsight.

We invite you to experience this exhibition, which seeks to engage one of the most pressing issues of contemporary society—energy—through the lens of art, and to encounter its underlying structures in a new light.