Mary Weatherford: Komorebi

galerie frank elbaz × Shibunkaku Joint Presentation

AWT Focus 2026

Mary Weatherford: Komorebi

Curated by Jeremy Strick

November 4 – 21, 2026
Shibunkaku Ginza

Shibunkaku is pleased to present Mary Weatherford: Komorebi, the first solo exhibition in Japan by American abstract painter Mary Weatherford, organized in collaboration with galerie frank elbaz.

The exhibition has been realized under the curatorial direction of an internationally acclaimed curator, Jeremy Strick, former director of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). It offers a rare opportunity for Japanese audiences to encounter a substantial presentation of Weatherford's recent significant body of work.

Presented as part of AWT FOCUS, a special program of Art Week Tokyo, the exhibition focuses on works centered around paper and shells, two materials that have occupied an important place in Weatherford's recent practice. Through Strick's curatorial perspective, these works reveal new dimensions of the artist's ongoing exploration of abstraction.

Throughout her career, Weatherford has developed a distinctive painterly language through a dynamic and physical process in which intuition and experience, speed and deliberation, chance and control intersect in complex ways. The exhibition features delicate works produced in 2024 using shellac ink on ganpi paper, alongside paintings incorporating shells created in 2021.

Bringing together seemingly opposing qualities such as ephemerality and materiality, accident and control, these works demonstrate the rich tension and subtle balance that have long characterized Weatherford's approach to painting.

The exhibition title, Komorebi, derives from the Japanese word describing sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees. Referring to a fleeting phenomenon that emerges between light and shadow, nature and perception, the term evokes Weatherford's enduring sensitivity to light and the poetic spatiality created through her materials and color. "Dappled light" is another succinct translation, recalling the natural event's specific characteristic of light, temperature, and weather that in the lexicon of her work calls forth the feeling of delight. Through Jeremy Strick's curation, Mary Weatherford: Komorebi offers a new perspective on the artist's work and invites viewers to engage deeply with her unique visual world.

Artist Biography

Mary Weatherford

Born in 1963 in Ojai, California, Mary Weatherford is an artist who has expanded the possibilities of abstract painting through a practice grounded in both experimentation and conviction. While working within the tradition of American abstraction, she has developed an innovative visual language known for expressive brushwork and the incorporation of sculptural elements such as neon tubing, introduced into her paintings beginning in 2012. Her work treats abstraction as both a formal and poetic mode of expression.

Weatherford's work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tate. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Curator Biography

Jeremy Strick

Born in 1955, Jeremy Strick is one of America's leading museum directors and curators. After serving for more than nine years as Director of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), he was Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center from 2009 to 2024, where he organized numerous significant exhibitions.

He has also held curatorial positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., establishing an international reputation for his expertise in modern and contemporary art. Strick has organized exhibitions for many influential artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Robert Smithson, and Takashi Murakami, and is widely published as a writer and lecturer on art history and contemporary art.