Invisible Networks and the Magic of Bamboo: “INVISIBLE FOREST” with Tanabe Chikuunsai IV in Seoul

When we turn our eyes below the earth, we feel the presence of a massive, invisible network where mushrooms, roots, and microorganisms communicate with one another and share nutrients. Just like contemporary life today, where we connect to each other from screen to screen via digital signals, yet amidst this chaos ask ourselves, “What does it really mean to exist?”…

One of the living legends of Japanese bamboo art, Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, visits Frieze House in Seoul to search for an answer to this very question. Organized in collaboration with Yumekoubou Gallery, the exhibition “INVISIBLE FOREST” invites visitors on a fairytale journey wrapped in the invisible bonds of nature and technology from August 27 to September 19, 2026.

White and Black Born from Destruction: A Two-Part Experience

The exhibition feeds on the idea that no entity in nature or the digital world can live alone in isolation. Everything exists through a continuous state of change, cycle, and interdependence. Chikuunsai IV carries this idea into the space across two spellbinding stages:

• Part 1: SHIKAI (始壊): In this section, we encounter brand-new sculptural forms where bamboo and soil merge. In these works, where white symbolizes “creation” and black symbolizes “destruction and dissolution,” the artist etches the trace of time into the texture of the works through physical movements like pouring, carving, and layering. Destruction here is not an end, but an essential transformation opening doors to fresh beginnings.
• Part 2: INVISIBLE FOREST: At the heart of the exhibition stands a monumental, site-specific installation composed of nearly 7,000 delicately split bamboo strips. Floating between the gallery walls like fungal networks beneath the soil, the bamboo combines with light and shadow, transforming the entire architecture almost into a single living creature. Instead of observing the artwork from the outside, you walk right through the center of this colossal network, feeling as though you yourself are a tiny node in this grand web of life…

Touching the Invisible Bonds

This exhibition, where bamboo, soil, light, and architecture meet, allows us to view nature and humanity, matter and information not as opposing poles, but as parts of the same cycle sustaining existence. Feeling those thousands of secret bonds that we cannot see yet keep us grounded is a tremendous opportunity to re-examine our place in the contemporary world.

If your path leads to Seoul between these dates, don’t forget to drop by Frieze House and surrender yourself to the enchanting silence of this bamboo forest!