WAITINGROOM (Tokyo) is pleased to present “RandoMe,” a solo exhibition by exonemo, on view from Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, July 5, 2026. This will be exonemo’s first solo presentation at the gallery in nearly three years. The title “RandoMe” is a neologism combining “Random,” “Me,” and “Rando,” a slang term meaning “a random person.” As the title suggests, the exhibition explores “randomness” through a selection of recent works, including a new installation. Each work visualizes different forms of randomness, varying in both its mode of expression and the entities it involves. In giving form to randomness, the works simultaneously reveal the irreplaceability of each individual. “Being random,” “being oneself,” and “being someone unknown.” These uncertainties intertwine and unfold throughout the exhibition space.
Left: Hatch/et, 2026, Mixed media , w250 × h700 × d40 mm
Right: ENTROPY, 2026, Mixed media, w230 × h300 × d40 mm
exonemo is an artist duo formed by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa in 1996 on the internet. Originally active in the early days of the Internet and now based in New York, they traverse the boundaries between digital and analog, as well as the physical and informational realms. Their work continues to explore the transformations brought about by a networked society with a blend of sharp critical insight and humor. Recipients of the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica (2006), exonemo has gained significant international recognition.They have presented their work at major museums, including an online exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2019). They are also known for expanding the frameworks of art through experimental projects like “The Internet Yami-Ichi,” an event that translates internet culture into a physical experience and has since spread to over 30 cities worldwide. Their recent exhibitions include “Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026: あなたの音に | 日花聲音 | Polyphonic Voices Bathed in Sunlight” (2026, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo), solo exhibition “On Memory” (2023, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), group exhibition “GEMINI Laboratory Exhibition” (2022, ANB Tokyo, Tokyo), solo exhibition “Metaverse Petshop” (2022, NowHere, New York, USA), group exhibition “Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition” (2022, TOKYO CITY VIEW, Tokyo / ABENO HARUKAS Art Museum, Osaka), solo exhibition “CONNECT THE RANDOM DOTS” (2021, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), “Aichi Triennale 2019: Taming Y/Our Passion” (2019, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi) and many others. At their solo exhibition “exonemo UN-DEAD-LINK: Reconnecting with Internet Art” held in 2020 (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo), they were awarded the 2020 (71st) Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In 2021, they were selected as the third artist for the Obayashi Foundation’s grant program “Visions of the City – Obayashi Foundation Research Program”, and a book documenting their research, “Infected Cities,” was published in the spring 2023.
Einstein, who could not accept quantum physics, once said, “God does not play dice.” Yet in recent technologies, it seems that we are encountering dice more and more frequently. Cryptocurrencies use keys generated from randomness, and AI systems also invoke randomness when producing responses. A society that once valued reproducibility so highly—trusting computers because identical inputs produced identical outputs—now appears to be gradually accepting results that are non-reproducible and random. Is this a form of tolerance, or a form of degeneration?
Mathematician Gregory Chaitin defined a random sequence as “information that cannot be further compressed.” In other words, a truly random number can be seen as an entity with a unique individuality that cannot be reduced to anything else. Expanding this idea leads us toward questions of identity itself. In this sense, “randomness” becomes a fascinating concept. It reminds us that we ourselves may have been born in a random place, at a random time, with random characteristics.
This exhibition brings together exonemo’s recent works on randomness (including new works). Each work takes a slightly different approach to the concept of randomness.
“Hatch/et” is a device that continuously attacks randomly generated passcodes of varying lengths, and destroys itself with an axe the moment it succeeds in decoding one. A mass-produced computer, a replaceable entity, encounters a unique code and is elevated into an irreplaceable being. Yet this elevation comes at the cost of its own destruction. The work can be seen as one in which the acquisition of individuality and its disappearance coincide at the same point.
“Connected the Random Dots” is an extension of the earlier work “Connect the Random Dots.” Eight-year-old children of different ethnic backgrounds are brought together and asked to connect dots on canvases roughly the size of their bodies. The dot patterns are generated using each child’s birthday as a random seed, meaning the same child will always face the same configuration. However, the lines drawn by the children—whose physical and mental control is still developing—shift each time and begin to acquire individuality. It is a work in which a deterministically given random configuration is met with a different kind of individuality through immature bodily expression.
“Rolled-and-Move” is an installation composed of wall-mounted video and floor drawings. Based on recorded footage of dice being rolled continuously, visitors can play a board game using their own bodies. Although the sequence of dice outcomes remains fixed due to the recorded video, the timing of each visitor’s arrival is random, causing the outcome of the play to differ each time. At the intersection of a fixed sequence of randomness and the contingency of visitation, each experience emerges anew.
Randomness is a system that does not guarantee outcomes, and to engage with it is to accept that uncertainty. This exhibition attempts to illuminate the possibilities of randomness from various perspectives. Encounters with randomness may be rare moments in which we confirm our own irreducibility. When we meet true randomness, do we find sympathy with it, or do we simply pass by each other as mutually incompressible entities? We invite you to experience this through the exhibition.
— exonemo, May 2026
exonemo, who has been working fluidly across the internet and the real world, attempts to visualize “randomness” from multiple perspectives in this exhibition. Tracing the etymology of the word “random,” one arrives at its roots in Frankish and Germanic languages, where it meant “to run (swiftly).” This evokes the ultra-fast generation of random numbers in the internet age, while simultaneously containing the possibilities of accidental collisions, inevitable encounters, or even moments of passing by.
In the new installation “Rolled-and-Move,” the exhibition space is transformed into a board game. While the sequence of dice outcomes is predetermined, the very act of entering the exhibition activates randomness within the installation. In “Hatch/et,” the decoding of random passcodes is transformed into both the acquisition and destruction of individuality, while in “Connected the Random Dots,” bodily engagement gives unique variation to a birth date assigned as a form of inherent randomness.
In addition to these three works, the exhibition presents multiple mechanisms that connect randomness to lived experience. “ENTROPY” generates noise between different layers—digital and physical, bodily operation, and the act of viewing. “Racial Dice” connects randomness and equality through the act of rolling dice, while “Find My SHIT” continuously generates letters on a screen until a specific word emerges. Together, these works unfold randomness within the context of real-world experience.
When we surrender ourselves to outcomes beyond our control, what do we encounter, and what do we pass by? Randomness rendered visible through multiple perspectives, materials, and methods opens us to experiences in which specific outcomes and exact reproduction are not guaranteed, while simultaneously bringing forth the irreducible singularity of the individual.
Connected the Random Dots, 2026, Acrylic, Sand, Crayon on Canvas, w1193 × h1193 × d38 mm
