As Osaka welcomes the world for EXPO 2025, Art Osaka 2025 offers a compelling supplement to the city’s cultural moment. Held from June 5 to 9 across two vibrant districts, this 23rd edition of Japan’s longest-running contemporary art fair invites visitors to explore a spectrum of artistic practices that span traditional gallery exhibitions, monumental site-specific installations, and experimental moving image works.

With over 60 galleries from Japan and abroad, Art Osaka 2025 bridges the refined elegance of the historic Osaka City Central Public Hall and the raw industrial charm of the former shipyard-turned-art-hub in Kitakagaya. From cutting-edge media art to poetic sculptural interventions, the fair captures the pulse of Japan’s evolving contemporary art scene, celebrating both its regional roots and its global ambitions.

Osaka City Central Public Hall, Photo: Yuico Taiya, Courtesy of ART OSAKA

At the heart of Art Osaka lies the Galleries Section, set within the iconic Osaka City Central Public Hall, a Neo-Renaissance architectural gem that epitomizes the city’s Meiji-era modernization. This year, for the first time, the entire building has been devoted to the fair, allowing contemporary art to inhabit the historic halls with a renewed sense of spatial and cultural resonance. Beneath stained-glass ceilings and ornate archways, visitors encounter a carefully curated selection of contemporary works that respond to the grandeur and legacy of the venue itself.

© Kazuma Koike

With 44 galleries from Japan and abroad participating, the Galleries Section is a vibrant meeting ground for collectors, curators, and enthusiasts alike. The selection leans toward mid-career and emerging artists, offering a nuanced portrait of current artistic trends, particularly from the Kansai region. First-time participants such as AISHO (Tokyo/Hong Kong), EUKARYOTE (Tokyo), and COHJU (Kyoto) bring fresh perspectives. AISHO, for instance, highlights Kazuma Koike, whose works resemble fictional ancient artifacts that merge global histories with hybrid mythologies. His art resonates with spiritual syncretism, evoking both Shinto and Buddhist symbolism filtered through a global lens.

EUKARYOTE Booth, Photo: Courtesy of ART OSAKA

EUKARYOTE presents artists like Ryo Kikuchi, known for immersive paintings that collapse landscape and abstraction, and Haruna Shinagawa, whose process of peeling away painted surfaces reveals ghostly imprints of memory and time. COHJU introduces rising talents such as Kousai Shiraishi, whose dreamlike canvases interweave childhood recollections with folklore, and Fu Nagasawa, who explores the boundaries between painting and traditional crafts through the lens of Japan’s Mingei movement.