“Concentratevi sull’essenziale e tutto andrà bene.”

Inkjet print, frame, 2022

In 2022, Yamaguchi made his first visit to the Venice Biennale. After spending three days viewing exhibitions, he stopped to rest at a small Chinese restaurant where he received a fortune cookie containing an unexpected message in Japanese: “Focus on what’s essential, and everything will work out.”

Setting this photo as his phone wallpaper, he decided to revisit the same restaurant during each Biennale, held every two years, to try his luck again. However, when he returned to Venice in 2024, he found the restaurant had closed down.