Press
Supplementary materials
June 25, 2025
Exhibitors
Hosted in the Kyoto International Conference Center, the fair comprises two sections: “Gallery Collaborations”, which pairs a Japan-based gallery with its international peer in a shared booth; and “Kyoto Meetings”, which features presentations with distinct connections to Kyoto.
Gallery Collaborations
Gallery Collaborations this year will welcome 30 international galleries from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Asia Pacific, hosted by 29 Japan-based galleries in shared booths.
Hosts (29 Japan-based galleries)
Guests (30 international galleries)
* First-time exhibitors
ANOMALY (Tokyo)
Barbati Gallery* (Venice)
COHJU (Kyoto)
Turnus* (Warsaw)
CON_ (Tokyo)
Arario Gallery* (Seoul)
HAGIWARA PROJECTS (Tokyo)
Sophie Tappeiner* (Vienna)
imura art gallery (Kyoto)
Tristan Hoare Gallery* (London)
KAYOKOYUKI (Tokyo)
Chapter NY* (New York)
Keijiban* (Kanazawa)
Gauli Zitter (Brussels)
MAKI Gallery (Tokyo)
Sow & Tailor* (Los Angeles)
MISAKO & ROSEN (Tokyo)
Galerie Max Mayer* (Berlin)
Mitochu Koeki Co. (Tokyo)
Annely Juda Fine Art (London)
Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo)
Asia Art Center* (Taipei)
MUJIN-TO Production (Tokyo)
ROH (Jakarta)
nca | nichido contemporary art (Tokyo)
A Thousand Plateaus Art Space (Chengdu)
Nonaka-Hill (Kyoto)
Hannah Hoffman* (Los Angeles)
PARCEL* (Tokyo)
THE SHOPHOUSE (Hong Kong)
Satoko Oe Contemporary (Tokyo)
Gallery Artbeat* (Tbilisi)
SCAI THE BATHHOUSE (Tokyo)
Kiang Malingue* (Hong Kong)
Shibunkaku (Kyoto)
Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo)
ShugoArts (Tokyo)
Keteleer Gallery* (Antwerp)
space Un* (Tokyo)
Retro Africa* (Abuja)
Taka Ishii Gallery (Tokyo)
Galerie Martin Janda* (Vienna)
Takuro Someya Contemporary Art (Tokyo)
TKG+ (Taipei)
TARO NASU (Tokyo)
Gladstone Gallery* (New York)
Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Tokyo)
GENE GALLERY (Shanghai)
Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo)
Chris Sharp Gallery (Los Angeles)
WAITINGROOM (Tokyo)
MANGROVEGALLERY* (Shenzhen)
Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery (Osaka)
Silverlens* (Manila)
18, Murata* (Tokyo)
Crèvecœur (Paris), Matthew Brown (Los Angeles)
4649 (Tokyo)
Good Weather* (Chicago)
Kyoto Meetings
“Kyoto Meetings” will feature 13 galleries, including 7 from Japan and 6 from overseas, each presenting works with connections to the historic city of Kyoto, offering an opportunity to explore the city from varied perspectives.
* First-time exhibitors
A Lighthouse called Kanata (Tokyo)
Artcourt Gallery (Osaka)
FINCH ARTS (Kyoto)
Johyun Gallery (Busan)
KANEGAE (Kyoto)
kurimanzutto (Mexico City)
MORI YU GALLERY (Kyoto)
neugerriemschneider (Berlin)
Perrotin (Tokyo)
Raster* (Warsaw)
Sadie Coles HQ (London)
GALLERY SIDE 2* (Tokyo)
Ulterior Gallery (New York)
ACK Curates
※Details of the ACK Curates will be announced in early September 2025.
ACK Curates is a series of programs organized by ACK. Under a theme presented by the fair director each year, it includes a “Public Program” exhibition, Kids’ Programs, ACK Talks, and others.
ACK Curates 2025 Theme “2050—Gaze Toward the Future”
How do you envision the world in the year 2050?
This theme encapsulates the three key ideas of “Equality and Disparity,” “Scale Changer,” and “Collaborative Intelligence.” One of art’s unique characteristics is that it is created with the intention to endure fifty or even one hundred years from now. Learning from the past leads us to envision the future. We also believe that a stronger future can be built not through a single dominant force, but through a harmony of many small forces that transcend disciplines and regions. In Kyoto where tradition and innovation coexist, we hope ACK will become a place that fosters cross-disciplinary collaborations and nurtures a shared gaze toward the future.
Yamashita Yukako
Fair Director, ACK
Public Program
A special exhibition using a wide variety of spaces in and around the ACK venues. This year’s guest curator, Martin Germann and Kimura Kokoro, establishes a curatorial theme responding to the ACK Curates 2025 theme “2050—Gaze Toward the Future” and presents various selected works.
Public Program Curatorial theme “Symbiosis: Art and Common Grounds”
Building on ACK’s collaborative spirit, the ACK Public Program 2025 cultivates symbiosis through dialogues among diverse forms of knowledge, perspectives, and identities in Kyoto—a city shaped by accumulated layers of lives, memories, and the evolving ideas and values of its people over time.
Driven by economic and identity-based supremacism and neocolonialism, new forms of violence continue to expose the limitations of systems built on separation. In contrast, the ecologically grounded concept of “symbiosis”—an interdependent relationship between distinct organisms—offers a worldview rooted in coexistence and collaboration.
By asking how this discourse can relate to the languages and logics of contemporary art, we bring practices to the forefront that extend beyond the confines of the white cube to engage with the cultural and urban fabrics of Kyoto.
Rooted in coequal exchange, the program aims to pave future pathways toward coexistence, in alignment with the fair’s thematic horizon “2050.”
Guest Curators:
Martin Germann
Martin Germann lives and works in Cologne. Since 2021, he has served as an adjunct curator for Mori Art Museum. He organized the 9th Biennial of Painting at Belgium’s Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens and served as a curatorial advisor for Aichi Triennale 2022. From 2012 to 2019, he led the artistic department of S.M.A.K. Ghent. Previously, he was a curator at the Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover (2008–2012) and worked for the 3rd and 4th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. He published numerous exhibition catalogues and monographs, and his writing appeared in magazines such as 032c, Frieze, and Mousse. For Lili Dujourie: Folds in Time, he received an AICA award for Belgium’s best exhibition in 2016.
Kimura Kokoro
Kimura Kokoro is interested in the intersection of feminist with queer perspectives and decolonial discourses and explores the transformative potential of identity and relationality through exhibitions and workshops. She has also collaborated with institutions and artists across Asia, including SURVIVE! Garage (Yogyakarta) and HAPS (Kyoto). Kokoro completed an MA in Arts and Society at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and undertook a research internship at Cemeti: Institute for Art and Society in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
ACK Talks
ACK Talks is an international conversation series spanning diverse genres. A diverse range of talk programs will be held with the aim of building a community centered on culture and the arts. Details of the programs will be announced in September.
ACK Kids’ Programs
ACK will hold both workshops and tours for children with the aim to nurture the next generation, create an environment to encourage children to grow to love art, and to renew an awareness of the necessity of art education for the future. It offers participatory workshops that combine “seeing” through guided tours of the venue and “making” by actually working with hands to create artworks together with artists. In addition, a bilingual childcare service (operated by Rakuwakai Otowa Hospital) will be available for visitors with children from 3 months to 7 years old. Registration for the childcare service is scheduled to commence in early July.
ACK Ambassadors
ACK welcomes the following ambassadors to help spread the word about ACK to as many people as possible around the world.
Jam Acuzar, Aso Kazuko, Lena and Nathalie Baume, Edmund Cheng, Lee Soyoung, Jacques Verhaegen, Johnson Yang & Sophie Wang
Inquiry
ACK Executive Committee, Overseas Media Relations
Yoshiko Nawa and Rasa Tsuda press@a-c-k.jp
Please note:
Information listed here is current as of June, 2025.
There may be some changes due to extenuating circumstances.
For updated information, check the website or social media channels.