I.CEBERG

I.CEBERG is an art collective of five artists who belong to WOW, a visual design studio in Tokyo. We call one another "maisons," and while each of us pursues a different theme — physical phenomena, form, collage — we explore expression that crosses the boundaries between the digital and the analog, the artificial and the organic. What we chase is what lies beneath the waterline of an iceberg: the things that lurk in everyone's heart yet have not yet found words. Fear and longing, ugliness and tenderness, folded together into something we call the "monster." To unearth it and offer it up as expression is the core of our activity. At the center of that practice is our independent art book, I.CEBERG MAGAZINE. ISSUE 01 (2025) was a large-format volume composed of visuals alone, without words; through a unique binding that staggers the fore-edge in five tiers, we made the five artists' separate worlds coexist within a single book. ISSUE 02 (2026) placed words at its center, with the reading direction switching between vertical and horizontal for each maison, so that the reader progresses by rotating the book itself. As for exhibitions, we have taken part in TOKYO NODE's "TOKYO PROTOTYPE," the "New Kaiju Exhibition" at Shibuya Hikarie, ZINE FES, and HOMEWORKS 2025 (Osaka), among others.

■ I.CEBERG MAGAZINE ISSUE 01 (published, 2025) A large 250×300mm format. It presents the artwork and creative process of the five maisons through visuals alone, without words. Bound with a unique method that staggers the fore-edge in five tiers, like a telephone book, it raises up five separate worlds within a single volume. The serial-numbered first edition sold out; it is now in its second edition. ■ I.CEBERG MAGAZINE ISSUE 02 (published, 2026) 110×180mm. An issue that traces the outline of the collective with words at its center. The reading direction switches between vertical and horizontal for each maison, so that the reader progresses while physically rotating the book. The first edition sold out. ■ I.CEBERG MAGAZINE ISSUE 03 (provisional / unreleased, in preparation) An art book we are preparing as the culmination of our practice so far. In addition to a masterpiece from each maison, it will gather dialogues with the collaborators and connections who met and supported us through our work, weaving into a single volume the very theme of "the relationships with people that expand through making." We are aiming to unveil it for the first time at this fair (format, size, and print run are still being adjusted). We also plan to distribute "Fragments of Iceberg," small works that give three-dimensional form to shards of thought.

Our main work is commission-based digital content, made in response to clients' requests. Even work into which we have poured enormous effort is consumed and swept away the moment it goes out into the world. The sense that a work slips from our hands in exchange for its completion was something we could never quite shake. I.CEBERG is the practice of gathering up what spilled away in that process. The emotions and hesitations that never became words and were left behind in the flow of work — when we scoop them up one by one and reassemble them, an outline eventually rises into view. Something in which fear and longing, ugliness and tenderness, are inseparably bound together, something that has not yet fully become words. We call it the "monster." To believe in its existence, and — knowing full well that it cannot easily be grasped — to keep reaching for it all the same. It is in that very pursuit that we find meaning. I.CEBERG MAGAZINE is the record of that pursuit. The monster itself never resolves into an image, but to inscribe in a single volume the movements of the hands that chased it, and the traces of our wavering, becomes proof that we were here. As a form for leaving that proof, we feel that the book is the most fitting. A material with thickness and weight, one that the fingers holding it know for certain to exist. A book, which remains along with its tactile feel, keeps the easily-scattered "meaning of making" close at hand. The five-tiered staggered binding of ISSUE 01, and the read-while-rotating structure of ISSUE 02, are both, by the measure of efficiency, "things one need not do." We choose them nonetheless because we want to leave the invisible monster behind as something that was, without doubt, present in this world. That is why we make things "the hard way" — wazawaza.

For us, a book is proof that the monster we chased truly was there. But the proof is not complete simply by being printed. Only when it passes into someone's hands and is received is the monster at last witnessed by another, its existence made certain. That is why we seek a place where we can hand our books over in person. We felt that this fair holds a kind of time fitting for that act of handing over. Rather than competing over the quantity or speed of dissemination, one sits at a low table set on tatami, lowers oneself to the floor, and offers up one book at a time. It is the very opposite of the speed we live in daily, where things are consumed and swept away the moment they are made. The movements of the hands that chased the monster, and the wavering along the way, can be passed slowly to the single person before us. We want to make the trip all the way to this place, the hard way. That feeling was less a matter of logic than something close to intuition.