Since completing the MFA program in Sculpture at Tama Art University in 1996, Ohno has spent three decades creating works centered on reflections on life and death and on the nature of existence. In recent years, he has actively produced and exhibited work not only in Japan, but also across Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.

The conceptual foundation of his practice lies in his inquiry into the relationship between life and death and the existence of the world. Drawing on a wide range of intellectual traditions—including Indian and Buddhist philosophy, Western existential thought rooted in Greek philosophy, and modern physics such as quantum theory—this inquiry takes form in diverse spatial expressions: wooden sculptures hollowed to their structural limits, large-scale outdoor works made from reclaimed materials, and installations composed of individually knotted silk threads illuminated by ultraviolet light.

The title of the exhibition, Deus sive Natura, is Latin for “God or Nature,” a phrase associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza.

In the twenty-first century, a large-scale war of attrition—once thought impossible under the existing structure of international political power—has again become a reality, as though reviving the nightmare of the Second World War. In this exhibition, Ohno poses a fundamental question: can a world in which life and death are bound together in violence truly exist as “God or Nature”? Through this inquiry, he makes visible the boundary between life and death in a walk-through installation unfolding across the six levels of the Tadao Ando-designed building.

Marking a milestone in Ohno’s artistic career, this exhibition gives form to a long-standing inquiry into life, death, and existence, taking Spinoza’s idea of “God or Nature” as its point of departure.