Opening reception: Masaaki Sato - New York Since 1970

Join us for the opening reception of Masaaki Sato: New York Since 1970, a retrospective of the Japanese-born artist who has made this city his subject for more than five decades.

New York gives its inhabitants plenty to look at but little encouragement to stop. Sato has spent fifty years stopping to look, finding the unexpected in familiar sights. In his hands, a subway car or an apple becomes a way of asking how we see, and how we find our place among strangers.

In the Holes works, conical openings puncture bodies and vehicles, making the solid vulnerable. In the Newsstands, headlines and magazine titles become material for invention as familiar lettering turns strange. We know what we're looking at until we look again.

Born in Kofu in 1941, Masaaki Sato studied in London before arriving in New York in 1970, the same year his Subway series ran on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. OK Harris Gallery, under Ivan C. Karp, represented him for three decades, and today he is recognized as a key figure bridging Japanese and American postwar visual culture.

Exhibition dates
November 19, 2026 – January 16, 2027

Opening reception
Friday, November 20, 6–8 PM
40 Lispenard St, Tribeca

Read more about Masaaki Sato here.