1. THIS IS A TANK-TOP (2014–)
Printed on copy paper, postcard, masking tape, stamp, ink, marker, needle.
"THIS IS A TANK-TOP" is a project that visualizes "the uncertainty of existence" and "the accumulation of time." In 2014, KONMASA was profoundly impacted by contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and realized he was wearing a tank top at that moment. This previously unconscious daily garment emerged as a symbol of his "existence," leading him to decide to continue wearing tank tops.
This realization marked the beginning of documenting tank tops, evolving into a long-term project. Each year, KONMASA photographs himself wearing a tank top, blacks out his face in the printed photo, and punctures holes over it. This simultaneously signifies "I was here" and "I am no longer here," highlighting the transformation of existence over time.
2. MEISO (2015–2023)
Washi (Japanese paper), pinholes (needle-punctured), ink, LED lighting.
"MEISO" is a project where repetitive physical actions transform into self-exploration. Amid his continuous activity of wearing tank tops, KONMASA grappled with the question, "What is expression?" While relieving stress by persistently puncturing holes in paper, he experienced a meditative state as distractions faded.
He then chose washi, a biodegradable material, and combined it with LED lighting on the back of frames to create luminous paintings that simultaneously visualize the accumulation and disappearance of time. The artwork changes depending on the viewing angle, with hidden text appearing when the LED is off, offering a multifaceted experience.
Through creating countless self-portraits using pinholes, this project explores "existence." The exhibition space encourages viewers to introspect, sharing a meditative experience.
3. SIDEBURNS (2018–)
Video (HD), black and white, stereo sound.
"SIDEBURNS" is a project that visualizes the passage of time through bodily transformation. In 2018, KONMASA became intrigued by distinctive hairstyles he encountered in Israel. This led him to document the process of growing and cutting his sideburns as an exploration of continuity and change through his own body.
Similar to his continuous wearing of tank tops, this project investigates the temporality of existence through repeated cycles of growth and cutting. The video repetitively showcases the process of sideburns growing and being cut, serving as a record of "traces of time." The cut sideburns are incorporated into different materials, transforming into new forms, suggesting the transmission of personal memories and existence to others or different entities, with meaning shifting alongside physical change.
As a video work, "SIDEBURNS" portrays the recurring cycle of change, clearly contrasting "what was there" and "what is no longer there." The black-and-white visuals and minimal sound emphasize the ritualistic repetition of this act, allowing viewers to experience the ephemerality of existence and the continuity within change.
4. KONMASA BLDG (2021–2024)
TANK-TOP.
"KONMASA BLDG" is a project born from unforeseen circumstances. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, KONMASA returned to his hometown of Arimatsu in Nagoya City. There, he reconnected with a former junior colleague and became involved in his company. However, the colleague later went missing, and as KONMASA was the guarantor for a four-story building near Arimatsu Station that the colleague had leased, he took over the building, marking the beginning of this project.
On May 31, 2021, KONMASA buried a tank top at the building's entrance, naming the place "KONMASA BLDG." For the following 999 days, he operated the building as a café and gallery, incorporating a meditation room to share the passage of time with visitors.
On the 1000th day, February 24, 2024, after 999 days of operation, KONMASA unearthed the tank top with those who had visited over the years. However, it had lost its original form, transformed by the traces of time.
5. KONMAMA (2022–)
TANK-TOP (worn on March 28, 2022), Car (white-painted, used until disposal)
KONMAMA explores the relationship between memory and materiality.
On March 28, 2022—the day KONMASA's mother passed away—the tank top he was wearing became a symbol of their final moments together and is still preserved to this day.
This project suggests that everyday clothing can become a vessel for personal memories, capable of recording the presence of those we have lost.
KONMASA also repainted his mother’s car entirely white, removing its market value and redefining it as a pure symbol of memory.
As the car’s surface continues to be weathered—its paint peeling with rain and wind—he plans to keep driving it until it can no longer run.
When its journey comes to an end, he intends to combine parts of the car with the tank top he wore on the day of his mother’s passing, completing it as a single artwork.
This project questions the relationship between “things” that fade with time and “existence” that persists as memory.
How can we document and inherit what disappears physically?
The act of tracing that very process becomes the work itself, gently asking the viewer to consider the finiteness of life and the form of remembrance.
6. CARD (2022–)
Printed paper, stamp, pinholes (needle-punctured)
“CARD” is a project that visualizes encounters and traces of existence.
In July 2022, after experiencing On Kawara’s I Got Up exhibition, KONMASA began to reconsider the value of meetings and memories. On November 1 of the same year, he launched this project, distributing two identical cards to people he encountered in meaningful ways—one given to the recipient, and the other kept by KONMASA himself.
Card given to the recipient:
Front: “THIS IS NOT A TANK-TOP” with a three-digit serial number (stamped)
Back: “This will become an art piece when KONMASA takes off the tank top or when his death is confirmed.”
Card kept by KONMASA:
Front: “THIS IS A TANK-TOP” with the same serial number
Back: “This will become a scrap of paper when KONMASA takes off the tank top or when his death is confirmed.”
The two cards are stacked and punctured with the same number of holes as the serial number, marking the trace of KONMASA’s handover.
These cards are not distributed daily, but only during moments of particularly meaningful encounters.
To KONMASA, On Kawara’s I Got Up was a practice of making existence visible through time.
“CARD” inherits that spirit in KONMASA’s own way, reflecting on the meaning of encounters and engraving the traces of existence.
7. KONNANA (2023)
TANK-TOP (220cm × 100cm)
“KONNANA” explores the expansion of the symbolic motif of the tank top into urban space.
For KONMASA, the tank top is not just clothing—it is a medium that visualizes time, existence, and memory.
But when this garment, scaled far beyond the human body, appears in public urban space, can it still be called a “tank top”?
To address this question, KONMASA launched a project to expand the concept of the tank top to urban scale.
On April 19, 2023, marking Day 700 of the KONMASA Building, he presented a project dressing the 6.1-meter-tall Nana-chan mannequin, a symbol of Nagoya Station, with an enormous tank top for seven days.
Emblazoned on the garment was the phrase “THIS IS NOT A TANK-TOP.”
This message served as a device to shake existing assumptions, publicly posing the fundamental question: “What is a tank top?”
For KONMASA, a tank top is a marker of both “what was there” and “what is no longer.”
This project explored how far the concept of a tank top could be expanded beyond its function as clothing.
When removed from Nana-chan, the enormous garment transformed from mere fabric into a temporal trace of the seven days it had existed.
8. KONMEMO (2023–)
TANK-TOP, canvas, printed photographs, marker
Video (HD), sound composition
"KONMEMO" is a long-term recording project centered on daily life, repetition, and finitude.
Since January 1, 2023, KONMASA has been filming himself daily wearing a tank top, using a smartphone. Each cycle of the project spans 99 consecutive days. The tank tops worn during this process are hand-marked with the phrase “THIS IS A TANK-TOP” and numbered sequentially starting from “001.”
During each 99-day cycle, KONMASA wears the same tank top continuously, only removing it briefly for bathing, washing, and drying.
If he succeeds in recording all 99 days without interruption, the tank top is sewn onto a white canvas, with a document of the recordings attached to the back and stamped with the word “SUCCESS.”
If he forgets to record, the tank top is marked “FAILURE,” and the next day, he restarts the cycle with a new tank top and new number.
This process continues until reaching tank top number “099,” with the entire project expected to conclude around the year 2050.
Through this repetition, “KONMEMO” reveals how even seemingly simple acts of documentation require strong willpower to maintain, and it questions what meaning can emerge from repeating actions within finite time.
Regardless of whether the recordings succeed or fail, time itself continues to flow without pause.
By facing this fact, the work quietly asks: how do we confront our own finitude?
Additionally, the video component of the project includes audio captured from KONMASA’s own body—breathing, hand movements, footsteps, even intestinal sounds—creating a document not just of the act, but of the body itself existing within the flow of time.
9. MEISO ∞ TANK-TOPS (2023–)
Washi (Japanese paper), pinholes (needle-punctured), stamp
"MEISO ∞ TANK-TOPS" is a series of works that intentionally leave traces of existence in an invisible form, through repetitive bodily actions.
Originally developed as a self-portrait project under the name "MEISO", it evolved in 2023 into works shaped like KONMASA’s symbolic tank top.
To complete one tank top, 55,530 holes are punctured across 36 sheets of white washi paper.
The process follows a strict rule: every time a “patterned number” (e.g., repeating or mirrored digits such as 11, 22, 111, 2222, etc.) appears for the first time during the counting process, the washi is replaced and the hole-punching starts over from scratch.
This entire process must be completed within one 99-day cycle—the same duration KONMASA wears a tank top for his KONMEMO project.
The repetition continues endlessly until KONMEMO reaches its final day.
Each finished washi sheet is framed in wood, silently embodying a “tank top unseen in everyday life.”
Stamped in the top left is “THIS IS NOT A TANK-TOP,” and in the bottom right, the KONMEMO serial number along with the total number of punctures.
This work functions as a private ritual: within finite time, through an almost infinite repetition, KONMASA inscribes the traces of his existence.
In that subtle transformation toward eventual conclusion, he seeks the essence of what it means to live.
10. KONMASA 47 (2024–)
TANK-TOP, porcelain
Video (HD), sound composition
"KONMASA 47" is a project that explores how the traces of time and existence can depart from the individual body and merge with land and people, generating new connections.
From March 21 to April 22, 2024, KONMASA wore a single tank top and traveled through all 47 prefectures of Japan over a span of 33 days.
The tank top bore the handwritten words “THIS IS A TANK-TOP” and “KONMASA 47” beneath it.
The journey began in Aichi Prefecture, using a car inherited from his late mother.
Through selfies, video recordings of his drives, and encounters along the way, traces of time and geography were impressed upon the tank top, transforming it into a record of lived presence.
After the journey, the tank top was fired into porcelain over 66 days.
Then, in a ceremonial act, KONMASA and those involved with the project broke it into pieces.
Though it had lost its function as clothing, it had become a new object imbued with “time” and “memory.”
The act of breaking it symbolized the continuity of connection, even in the face of physical disappearance.
The fragments were gradually distributed to people KONMASA met during his journey—and to those he will meet in the future.
As a once-singular tank top disperses across the country, it forms an invisible map of Japan, representing a mode of “being” that remains connected even in separation.
When all fragments have left KONMASA’s hands, the project will reach completion in the form of a video work.
11. TANK-TOP-TSUDA (2024–2025) meets sanuki base
TANK-TOP, photographic book, participatory project
Washi (Japanese paper), pinholes (needle-punctured), ink, LED lighting
"TANK-TOP-TSUDA" is a participatory art project set in Tsuda Town, Sanuki City, Kagawa Prefecture, with the tank top as its central medium.
The project was sparked by a meeting with “Sanuki Base,” who attended the excavation of a tank top buried for 999 days in front of the KONMASA Building on February 24, 2024.
As an expression of gratitude, KONMASA attempted to “dress” the town of Tsuda in a tank top.
First, a map of Tsuda was drawn and overlaid with the shape of a tank top to define the project area.
Using an actual tank top, KONMASA traced its outline in white ink on black washi paper laid out on the beach.
From there, he carried the tank top throughout various locations in town, recording interactions between the garment, the landscapes, and the people.
This initiated a three-part process—absorption, deconstruction, and release—through the tank top.
On November 10, 2024, the tank top was affixed to a container wall at the town’s entrance, beginning a 99-day “absorption” period.
On February 24, 2025—exactly one year after the original excavation—the town’s residents gathered to ritually cut the tank top into 99 pieces.
Each fragment was numbered and accompanied by a photo book documenting the project’s process, launching the “release” phase.
The release took place over another 99 days, from June 3 to September 9, 2025.
As an official satellite event of the Setouchi Triennale 2025, artworks by local residents and invited artists were exhibited throughout Tsuda, transforming the town into a kind of “Tank-Top Art Festival.”
Additionally, a meditation room was created using black washi paper pierced with a map of Tsuda—echoing the tank top’s outline.
When viewers step into this space, they realize they are already inside the “tank top” itself—a spatial and conceptual immersion.
On the final day, September 9, the last of the 99 fragments was handed to Sanuki Base, completing the act of release.
This project visualizes how “existence” can be fragmented, passed on, and remembered through time and space.
Whether or not it was truly a “tank top” is open to interpretation.
But in the summer of 2025, one thing is certain: the people of this town were undeniably aware of the tank top—that awareness itself is the trace left behind by the work.
12. THE Biggest TANK-TOP on Earth (2025–)
TANK-TOP
Video (HD), sound composition (Documentary Film)
"THE Biggest TANK-TOP on Earth" is a project that expands the tank top—an everyday symbol—onto a global scale.
As a documentarian engaged in daily acts of “recording,” KONMASA invites people from around the world to connect lengths of white backdrop fabric, commonly used in photography. These are sewn together to create what will become the largest tank top in the world.
This collective effort to stitch the fabric is a challenge to the Guinness World Records, but also a poetic act that gently dissolves the boundaries between documentation and memory, the collective and the individual, the everyday and the celebratory.
What began in 2014 with a single tank top has now swelled to an earth-sized record.
The absurdity of this transformation, from the mundane to the monumental, is precisely what softens the heart and brings out laughter.
The entire process of creation is being recorded and will culminate in a documentary film.
And when this enormous tank top is finally laid out across the earth, what it signifies will be left entirely to the body and memory of each viewer.
13. 999 (2025–) To The Moon
Washi (Japanese paper), pinholes (needle-punctured), ink, LED lighting
TANK-TOP
"999 (To The Moon)" is a project aimed at leaving a trace of a tank top on the moon.
The exhibited works feature circular forms painted with sumi ink on washi paper, evoking lunar craters. Thousands of pinholes are used to form full moon shapes.
LED lights are installed on the back of the frames, allowing viewers to experience a shifting image—from new moon to full moon—depending on the angle from which the work is viewed.
Within one crater, a small silhouette of a tank top is hidden.
The act of discovering that one distinct shape among many becomes a metaphor for the search for traces of existence.
KONMASA plans to create and sell 999 of these moon-inspired artworks.
Proceeds from these sales will fund the next steps: photographing and recording a single tank top in 99 different countries.
The numbers “999,” “99,” and “1” are recurring motifs in KONMASA’s work, representing finitude, repetition, and the delicate uncertainty of being “one step away” from an end—while also pointing to a broader continuity that stretches toward the universe.
Ultimately, one single tank top will be sent to the moon.
In KONMASA’s earlier works, the tank top has served as a vessel to record time and existence through the act of wearing.
But once a trace of it reaches the moon, the significance of the tank top shifts—from a temporal accumulation to a spatial expansion.
The project unfolds in three phases:
-
Create, exhibit, and sell 999 full moon artworks to build a foundation for the journey
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Place a single tank top in 99 locations across the globe, leaving traces on Earth
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Explore ways to send one tank top to the moon, leaving a trace beyond Earth
Even if the tank top never physically reaches the moon, the structure of the project itself—its global scale and its focus on the act of imagining the moon—becomes the work.
Success is not measured by the physical feat, but by whether the image of the moon and the presence of the tank top take root in the viewer’s consciousness.
THIS IS NOT A TANK-TOP
・Video (HD), sound composition (Documentary Film)
・Novel
At the moment KONMASA dies,
or removes his tank top at the South Pole—
“A Life In A TANK-TOP,”
the life lived in a tank top,
will finally be complete.