Renowned photographer and contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto moved to New York in 1974. The first work in his "Diorama" series, Polar Bear (1976), emerged from Sugimoto's experience of a kind of illusion at the American Museum of Natural History, whereby a diorama seemed to be alive when he viewed it with one eye covered. His debut film, The Garden of Time (2020), showing at Stars, captures the changing seasons in remarkable detail at Enoura Observatory in Kanagawa.

Lee Ufan moved to Japan 20 years after being born in South Korea in 1936 and has been a resident since. He was one of the pioneers of "Mono-ha", a sculptural movement that rejected the idea of production and presented objects and materials as they were born. As Mono-ha has come to be reappraised at a global level, there is a rising tide of interest in the practices that have spanned Lee's 50-year career.