2-YOKAI, is a multimedia installation by Andy Fedak and Bruce Yonemoto. An exhibition that brings together animation, film and installation to explore the Japanese mythological spirits known as Yokai, specifically the Kappa and the Nurikabe, through surrealist narratives that draw on Japanese folklore to understand our own contemporary world.

A featured work is Hikikomori-0 (2025), an animated series of seven vignettes by Fedak, starring Brucio—a composite of artist Bruce Yonemoto and a popular Japanese video game character. Set in present-day Tokyo, Brucio experiences a dilemma: he is simply trying to go outside, but finds himself blocked from doing so by the Nurikabe. Blending contemporary cultural motifs with Japanese folklore, Fedak’s animations explore the real-world phenomenon of hikikomori (Japanese for pulling inward, being confined), a form of social withdrawal affecting young people who isolate themselves for months or sometimes years, and the accompanying shame of not living up to one's goals in a time and place wherein such goals are nearly impossible to achieve.

Fedak represents the Nurikabe—a folkloric creature likened to an invisible, impassable wall—as the problem itself, showing up as an invisible barrier Brucio cannot cross in each scene. The work connects myth with the global phenomenon of self-seclusion that was originally defined by the Japanese. A series of six high-end, handcrafted 3D-animated films, utilizing cutting-edge motion and facial capture, brings Brucio to life in performances that are interminably sad yet also hopeful. While Brucio is trapped, he may finally find his way outside with the help of his friends: a small green lizard and his brother.

Also on view is Kappa (1987), a beguiling film that deconstructs the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story. Conceived and created by Bruce Yonemoto with his brother Norman Yonemoto (1946-2014), and produced in collaboration with Mike Kelley (1954-2012), this landmark work crafts a highly charged treatise of loss and desire. Quoting from Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, alongside references to pop media and art, Kappa places representations of Western psychosexual analytical theory in a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a film that has become commonly described as “a delirious collusion of form and content.”

The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley, while actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Narrated by Keye Luke (1904-1991) and featuring an appearance by artist Ed “Eddie” Ruscha, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, Kappa demonstrates that cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate, even in debased forms.

Accompanying the screening of Kappa are related ephemera, including archived illustrations and storyboards by Mike Kelley, as well as Kappa figurines from Bruce Yonemoto’s research collection

Stills from Hikikomori-0, 2026, by Andy Fedak

Stills from Kappa, 1987, by Bruce and Norman Yonemoto