Artists: Hamra Abbas, Ahmed Alaqra, Jumairy, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Rintaro Fuse, YOKOMAE et BOUAYAD
Curated by Sophie Mayuko Arni
Venue: Louvre Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Exhibition Website
Louvre Abu Dhabi Richard Mille Art Prize, Art Here 2025: Shadows
Louvre Abu Dhabi and luxury Swiss watchmaking brand Richard Mille opened the fifth edition of the Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here exhibition, featuring six contemporary artworks by seven artists shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize. On view until 28 December 2025, the exhibition reaffirms the museum’s commitment to supporting contemporary artistic practice from the region and beyond.
Curated by guest curator Sophie Mayuko Arni, Art Here 2025 invited artists to respond to the theme Shadows, exploring the interplay between light and absence, visibility and concealment, and the layered dimensions of memory, identity, and transformation. Reflecting the richness of regional creativity, this year’s edition welcomed over 400 proposals from artists based in the GCC and Japan, along with artists from the MENA region with a GCC connection.
All photographs: Copyright Art Here 2025. Courtesy of Richard Mille.
Rintaro Fuse, A sundial for the night without end (2025)
Stainless steel
Exhibited at Art Here 2025: Shadows at the Louvre Abu Dhabi
Biography
Rintaro Fuse is a Japanese artist and poet. His practice delves into the evolving nature of human connection in the digital age. He explores themes of solitude and intimacy, particularly focusing on the shifts brought about by the proliferation of smartphones and digital communication. Fuse employs a diverse array of mediums - including video installations, VR, AR, web-based platforms, poetry, and curatorial projects - to investigate how technology mediates our experiences of presence and absence.
His solo exhibitions include Dead Corpus (2022, PARCO Museum Tokyo), All First Love Songs (2021, The 5th Floor), and Eve’s Butcher (2022, SNOW Contemporary). He has participated in group shows such as Does the Future Sleep Here? (2024, National Museum of Western Art), The Timeless Imagination of Yves Klein (2024, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa), and New Flatland (2021, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]).
Fuse holds a BFA and MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts. In 2024, he was selected for Forbes Japan’s list of “30 Under 30 Who Are Changing the World.”
Description of artwork:
This is a sundial built for a world after the death of the sun. Its purpose is not to measure time but to preserve the sun in our imaginations, in a night that will never end. The monumental scale of the work was conceived to multiply and dislocate the ways we imagine the beginning - or the end - of the world.
The structure is composed of polished stainless steel: industrial yet ethereal. It reflects its surroundings, drawing viewers into its soft metallic glow. At its core are three gnomons, upright poles traditionally used in sundials. Each is aligned with a different North Star: Thuban (past), Polaris (present), and Vega (future), and points to a different axis of time, inviting reflection on planetary motion and deep time.
Historically, sundials embody humanity’s attempt to understand celestial rhythms. Their alignment with Earth’s axis and the North Star reflects an ancient continuity, one that now confronts the sun’s mortality. In the 19th century, physicist Lord Kelvin proposed that the sun would eventually die. From that moment, the sun could no longer represent eternity.
This work is not apocalyptic but grounded in a material vision of disappearance. It invites us to think of eternity not as permanence, but as persistence through absence.
Installed on a rooftop, next to the backdrop of Jean Nouvel’s perforated dome at Louvre Abu Dhabi, the sculpture resonates with the building’s architectural cosmos - casting shadows even without a sun.