MEDEL GALLERY SHU HIBIYA is pleased to present Human Eyes, Earth Eyes, a solo exhibition by sculptor Michitaka Sakuta, on view from July 10 through July 21, 2026.

Michitaka Sakuta is a sculptor whose practice explores the relationships among people, materials, and the land through familiar media such as earth and everyday manufactured objects. His work challenges the values and assumptions we unconsciously accept in contemporary society, inviting viewers to reconsider not only what we see, but the very act of seeing itself.

This exhibition centers on Sakuta’s Soil Eyes series, created using soil collected from the region where the artist was born and raised. By bringing together the perspective of human beings with that of the earth—a material that has remained rooted in the same place across vast stretches of time—the works quietly encourage us to reflect on our relationship with the land and with the world around us.

Through Human Eyes, Earth Eyes, Sakuta offers a thoughtful meditation on memory, place, and perception, inviting visitors to experience the world through multiple viewpoints and to rediscover the profound connections between humanity and the earth beneath our feet.

The soil used in this exhibition was collected from Soka City, Saitama Prefecture, the town where I was born and raised. Returning to the ground beneath my feet through this process became an attempt to reconnect with my own roots. At the same time, as I engaged with the layers of time and memory embedded within that land, I began to wonder whether the soil beneath us might possess an “eye” much like our own.

Soil cannot move, nor can it speak. Yet over countless years it has remained in one place, quietly receiving and bearing witness to the events that unfold around it. Human activity, life and death, development and erosion, memory and forgetting—all of these accumulate within it. In this sense, soil may be understood as another eye, one that has continuously observed the world through the passage of time.

Throughout history, human beings have placed vision at the center of their understanding of reality. The Japanese proverb “Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times” reflects our tendency to trust what we see and to construct our understanding of the world through visual experience. But is the act of “seeing” truly a privilege reserved only for humans?

The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty described perception not as a separation between subject and object, but as an interaction between the body and the world. Similarly, Tetsurō Watsuji’s theory of climate and culture (fūdo) suggests that human beings and their environments are mutually constitutive. We do not merely look at the world; we also exist within it and are, in a sense, looked back upon by it.

The Japanese tradition of mitate (interpretive seeing) in garden design, as well as the attention to material presence found in the Mono-ha movement, likewise sought to move beyond a human-centered perspective and toward an awareness of the time and existence inherent in land and matter. Within these frameworks, soil and stone are not merely materials but entities that have experienced the world alongside us.

In Human Eyes, Soil Eyes, I bring together two perspectives: the world as constructed through human vision and the perspective of soil that has remained in the same place through vast stretches of time. Is it we who are looking at the soil, or is the soil looking at us? The boundary between these positions is uncertain, and the two become reflections of one another.

What has the soil beneath our feet seen? And how might human activity appear through the eyes of the soil? Through these questions, this exhibition seeks to reconsider the act of seeing itself and to explore the relationship between people and the land they inhabit.

Michitaka Sakuta