Exhibition · Podium Gallery · Hong Kong
PODIUM is proud to present “Phantom(’s) Presence”, Rotterdam-based Japanese artist Shimon Kamada’s first solo presentation with the gallery and in his career. In this new body of work, Kamada draws from his photo archives that span his childhood and teenage years in his hometown in Japan, conjuring realms where these images drift, overlap, and intertwine like fragmented memories. From hometown streets and domestic settings to scenes of natural sublimity and surreal dreamscapes; the artist bathes each composition in skewed light, melancholic shadows, and psychological tension to render a series of enigmatic narratives, revealing the fragile and elusive nature of remembrance. The exhibition opens on 13 June (Saturday) from 2 to 7 PM and is on view until 29 August (Saturday). The exhibition title unfolds along a dual register. On one hand, memories return as spectral traces, resurfacing as phantoms that linger within the present. On the other hand, it references the phenomenon of the phantom limb, where absence is paradoxically experienced as presence, blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. Together, these ideas probe the unstable and illusionary nature of memory as something both fleeting and insistently felt. Additionally, to underscore the plasticity and influx nature of memories, the exhibition will not remain a static presentation, instead it will be restructured mid-way during its exhibition period.