Image: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, will present ‘NEUTRAL COLORS: NEW CIRCUIT’ from September 15, 2026, through April 18, 2027. The exhibition, held in the museum’s Design Gallery, will examine the activities of NEUTRAL COLORS, an independent publisher, magazine and printing-and-binding workshop that produces handmade publications.
Founded in 2019, NEUTRAL COLORS developed from a desire to preserve selected feelings and experiences on paper rather than treating them as information to be shared instantly online. Its work combines interviews, editing, design, layout, printing, bookbinding and distribution. The exhibition will present these activities as an interconnected publishing process rather than focusing only on the finished magazine or book.
The project takes its title from the idea of a “circuit,” using the organization’s one-year publishing cycle as a framework. The Design Gallery will function as a publisher’s office, studio and printing-and-binding workshop, changing according to the work being carried out. The museum says the exhibition will show how the separate stages of production connect organically while introducing the distinctive pages created through handmade methods including risograph printing.
NEUTRAL COLORS works between the scale of mass commercial printing and small-run independent publishing. According to the museum, its model aims at an economically sustainable medium-sized form of publishing, with magazines produced at around 5,000 copies and books or art books generally produced in editions of approximately 300 to 1,000. The project also handles printing, binding and distribution itself. In 2025, it launched NEW COVER, a bookstore in its office that sells art books collected from around the world.
The exhibition will also involve independent bookstores, printers and designers active in Kanazawa, using their cooperation to explore new forms of the publishing cycle. The museum identifies NEUTRAL COLORS editor Naoto Kato and graphic designer Daisuke Kano among the project’s central figures. Kato began the one-person publishing house in 2019 after working for publishing companies, editorial production firms and design offices; he has also produced art books incorporating risograph and silkscreen techniques. The magazine ‘NEUTRAL COLORS’ began publication in 2020 and is issued annually.
Kano, born in Aichi Prefecture in 1992 and based in Kanagawa, works mainly in book design and publicity materials for the arts and cultural fields. His projects include the magazine ‘NEUTRAL COLORS,’ published since 2020, and the publication project Meian, launched in 2025. ‘NEUTRAL COLORS: NEW CIRCUIT’ will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with extended hours until 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Admission is free. The gallery will be closed on Mondays and on specified dates listed by the museum, including December 29 through January 1.
