Our first exhibition in 2013 features a new installation by Paramodel, an artist unit known for elaborate installations filled with Plarail model trains and tracks, mini cars and other toys. Paramodel was formed in 2001 by Yasuhiko Hayashi (born 1971) and Yusuke Nakano (born 1976). Both artists graduated from the Kyoto City University of Arts, Hayashi in 2001 with a degree in conceptual design and Nakano in 2002 with a degree in Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), and together they produce site specific installations in galleries and other venues in Japan and abroad.

The name Paramodel expresses the unit’s creative philosophy, and the artists have used it frequently as a keyword in the titles of exhibitions and works from the past to the present. It combines the word “model” with the prefix “para” bringing to mind such words as parallel, paradox, parameter, parasite, and paradise. True to this name, the artists’ installations give rise to countless possibilities. Micro-worlds created from scraps of construction material and parts, they symbolically express the extreme codification of our contemporary world while expanding indefinitely like eternally recomposing cities or organisms.

This time, behind the glass-block façade of a building in the heart of Tokyo, Hayashi and Nakano, each utilizing his own method, interpret the city and let their fantasy expand. An installation that endlessly models space; drawings on a temporary enclosure that suggest multi-storied buildings floating in air: the imaginations of each artist are minutely detailed and, at the same time, appear as illusion. Each artist’s world, represented by the different titles, combines to construct a para-world of which each is a part and, at times, the whole. This metaphysical play with models continues eternally within the imaginary space of the exhibition.