Blank Forms at Tokyo Jazz Club

Tokyo Jazz Club is a group exhibition debuting in 2026 as part of Art Week Tokyo, an annual citywide event presented in collaboration with Art Basel. As part of the inaugural edition’s wider music program, Blank Forms presents an idiosyncratic constellation of musicians from the Japanese underground, complementing curation from frequent Blank Forms collaborator Cyrus Goberville, Head of Cultural Programming at the Pinault Collection.

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Keiji Haino
Tuesday, November 3
10pm

Deeply informed by the concept of ma—the negative space in between, or “the deepest now”—Keiji Haino makes music that vacillates between excess and tranquility, throwing each into stark relief. Working across blues, rock, jazz, and free improvisation, Haino has produced a prolific body of work, both as a solo artist and in influential ensembles like Fushitsusha and Nazoranai, that has cemented his status as one of the living legends of the Japanese underground.

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Daisuke Fujiwara + Fumi Endo
Wednesday, November 4
8pm

Saxophonist Daisuke Fujiwara studied jazz performance and theory in America in the 1990s and, upon returning to Japan, made a name for himself by combining the far-flung improvisations of free jazz with the spare rhythms of minimal techno. His electroacoustic project quartz-head brought him into close contact with leading Detroit figures like Jeff Mills and Underground Resistance, while his work on saxophone has engaged him with ensembles including Boiling Disorder, rabbitoo, and Orquesta Libre.

Pianist Fumi Endo has cultivated a minimalist approach to her instrument, allowing each note or chord to suspend, wavering, in the air before she advances to new territories. Her recent solo debut, Cold Light in Warm Blue, pays careful attention to silence and resonance, defamiliarizing the piano’s timbres by calling attention to the sounds that emerge in the aftermath of a key being struck.

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RQRQ
Wednesday, November 4
9pm

RQRQ unites folk vocalist Yuka Ijichi with bassist Doronco of Les Rallizes Dénudés and guitarist Mitsuru Tabata of Boredoms and Acid Mothers Temple. The trio interprets American jazz standards in both Japanese and English, inflecting classic Western melodies with the vibrant string textures and surprising rhythms of their previous krautrock and psychedelic projects.

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Kyoji Ohno
Friday, November 6
6pm

Kyoji Ohno began making music with synthesizers in the mid-1970s, while earning a degree in engineering at Seikei University, and has continued innovating on the instrument for decades. His cult-classic album Music in DNA (released under the name Yasuhito Ohno), made using a four-track cassette recorder and Roland Juno-60 polyphonic synthesizer, infused the industrial sounds of the New York avant-garde with a playful, lo-fi innocence. Meanwhile, his long-running series of ambient albums—designed for meditation, concentration, physical fitness, and confidence, among other therapeutic purposes—use 3D audio imaging to create works of intricate sonic architecture that work on both the conscious and unconscious mind.