DEN Gai

Profile

Born in China in 1984. Lives and works in Tokyo. Graduated with an MFA from Kyoto University of the Arts (Photography and Image-making Field). Den moved to Japan in 2006. After working as an engineer, he turned to photography. He teaches photography at Nippon Photography Institute, Kuwasawa Design School, and Musashino Art University.

Recent exhibitions
2025 “Duration of Clouds,” Solo exhibition, Sony Imaging Gallery, Tokyo
2023 “Correspondence With The Past,” Solo exhibition, TOTEM POLE PHOTO GALLERY, Tokyo
2023 “80x80 Carpet Design,” Group exhibition, Sea World Culture Center, Shenzhen (China)
2022 “Temperated Landscape,” Solo exhibition, YART Gallery, Seoul
2019 “Living, Being There,” Solo exhibition, Guardian Garden, Tokyo

Grants and collections
2021 The 13th International Poster Triennial in Toyama
2018 The 19th Photography 1_WALL GrandPrix
2014 Collection of works, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts

About work

Den’s practice examines, through the mechanisms of photography, the fissures that emerge between landscape, memory, the body, and social transformation. Focusing on urban formation, vacant land, and infrastructure, he explores how individual experience is shaped within historical and institutional structures and continues to persist as a drifting presence. Rather than treating photography merely as documentation, he positions it as a medium that remains in contact with reality while evoking sensations prior to language. His work reconfigures relationships between image and word, presence and absence, and past and present. At its core is an attempt to bring overlooked temporal layers and the imperceptible operations of institutions to the surface of otherwise silent images.