妖怪と風景 Yōkai and Landscapes, an exhibition of photographs by Yuji Watanabe, curated by Charli Sas, opens at Picto New York on Thursday, October 15. Bringing together Watanabe’s Yōkai series and new landscapes photographed across Japan, the exhibition invites viewers into a world where folklore and place meet, and where a photograph can suggest as much as it reveals.
Drawing on Japanese folklore, Watanabe’s Yōkai series gives photographic form to spirits, creatures, and transformed objects. Made on 8 × 10 Polaroid, these images allow imagined beings to take on a tangible presence. The familiar becomes strange: an object seems to acquire a life of its own, a figure appears poised between worlds, and the boundary between the visible and the unseen begins to blur. Each photograph offers an encounter without fully explaining what or whom we are encountering.
Alongside this series, new landscapes photographed across Japan on ONE INSTANT film unfold like an emaki, a Japanese illustrated handscroll. Mountains, forests, caves, and waterfalls form a passage through places that seem open to imagined presences.
Viewed together, the photographs invite the eye to wander, tracing connections between one setting and the next. A shadow, an opening in the rock, or the space between trees becomes a reason to pause and look again.
Drawing on Japanese folklore, Watanabe’s Yōkai series gives photographic form to spirits, creatures, and transformed objects.
The relationship between the two bodies of work leaves room for the viewer’s imagination. The landscapes offer possible settings for the beings encountered in Yōkai, while those beings alter how we look at the landscapes. What first appears empty may begin to feel inhabited. What lies beyond the frame becomes part of the photograph’s pull.
A soundscape by Pinkcourtesyphone, the project of sound artist and composer Richard Chartier, accompanies the exhibition, extending its atmosphere beyond the photographs. Sound introduces another way of sensing presence, surrounding the images with something that can be heard but cannot be seen.
Together, photography and sound invite a slower, more attentive encounter with Watanabe’s work. 妖怪と風景 Yōkai and Landscapes asks us to linger with uncertainty—to consider how stories shape our experience of a place, and how looking closely can make even a familiar world feel newly mysterious.
Opening reception: Thursday, October 15, 2026, from 6:30pm to 9pm
Location: PICTO New York, 77 Washington Avenue, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11205
On view: October 15 through December 15, 2026
Opening hours: Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm. Weekends by appointment.
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