Kosuke Ajiro Invented a Civilization, Then Excavated It
Location: GR Gallery, 116 Chambers Street, New York
Date: September 12 – October 24, 2026
Project: Excavation Record I – Sayonara, Kosuke Ajiro's first US solo show
Why it Matters: Ajiro writes his own mythology, and shows the paintings as relics excavated from that world
Kosuke Ajiro was born in 1980 and lives in Tokyo. For years he has worked on a fictional world called the Kingdom of Sally. This is the first time it comes to the United States.
In the show, Ajiro is not the artist. He is the archaeologist. The thirty paintings stand in for fragments of an ancient mural, supposedly unearthed near Tokyo Skytree, that records an event called Sayonara. He says he dug them up, cleaned them off, and put them on the wall.
Sayonara is the seventh chapter of the Sally Mythology. It tells the end of the world, a catastrophe Ajiro compares to Ragnarök. The full story has a prologue, eight chapters, and an epilogue. It has about 3,000 characters, with its own languages and belief systems.
It began with a doodle. As a child Ajiro drew figures without much thought, and one day he named one Sally. Sally went from servant to queen to goddess, and the kingdom filled in around her.
His sources are Japanese narrative scrolls, medieval European manuscripts, and Hieronymus Bosch.
It all points back to the same trick: paintings made to pass as relics from a kingdom that only ever existed in Ajiro's head.
Excavation Record I – Sayonara runs through October 24.
More info: gr-gallery.com
Photo credit: courtesy of the artist and GR Gallery
