Index of Fillers — Fumi Ishino

Assembly is pleased to announce the publication Index of Fillers, a limited-edition artist book by Fumi Ishino. Index of Fillers is the artist’s second monograph following his acclaimed publication rowing a tetrapod (MACK, 2017) and is the first artist book published by Assembly. Composed of found images of Japanese culture from the late 1980s and 1990s along with Ishino’s own photographs, Index of Fillers is a recreation of the artist’s elusive memory of growing up during this era in Japan. Referencing the traditional format of Japanese comic strips, each image panel contains its own nostalgic narrative—from a cartoon Clearasil commercial to a video game rendering of a neighborhood to the interior of a love hotel. With a machine-embroidered felt cover housed inside a woven pencil case, each handmade book is unique and also includes a CD with a video piece made in Ishino’s childhood room.

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Fumi Ishino is an artist based in Los Angeles and Tokyo whose work explores issues of meaning, cultural interpretation, and the constructed space primarily through photography and installation. He holds an MFA from Yale University where he was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. Other awards include the Japan Photo Award (2015) and the Honorable Mention Award from New Cosmos Photography (2015). His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Fraenkel Gallery, the FLAG Art Foundation, and Houston Center for Photography, and has been featured in publications including Aperture Magazine, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and AnOther. His books include rowing a tetrapod (MACK, 2017), Tinted Lines (torch press, 2021), and Index of Fillers (Assembly, 2021).