Kota Ezawa: Here and There—Now and Then

For Kota Ezawa’s Here and There — Now and Then at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, the exhibition graphics were designed to echo Ezawa’s minimalist, cinematic language while drawing attention to the site’s layered history and waterfront location.

A key artwork, Grand Princess, renders the quarantined cruise ship as a cinematic image floating across the Bay—referencing its real 2020 passage by Fort Mason en route to quarantine. To heighten this effect, large-scale details drawn from Ezawa’s artwork were installed on the gallery’s exterior windows using trompe-l’œil techniques, creating the illusion that the vessel was drifting just beyond the building—turning Fort Mason into both backdrop and projection surface. Inside, typography stretches across adjacent walls, requiring physical movement to be read and inviting viewers to reorient themselves within the space.

The design strategy extends the artist’s language into the architecture, using scale, placement, and movement to heighten spatial awareness. Rather than decorating the space, the identity responds to it—amplifying Ezawa’s themes of perception and place through direct engagement with the environment.