photo: SAIKI Taku
Untitled
| Artist | KATO Izumi |
|---|---|
| Year | 2011 |
| Material/ Technique | acrylic, pencil on paper |
| Size/ Duration | H76.5 × W41cm |
| Copyright Notice | © KATO Izumi |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2014 |
| Description | Born in Shimane, Japan in 1969. Lives and works in Tokyo. Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino Art University in 1992. Since the 2000’s, Kato has garnered attention as an innovative artist through solo and group exhibitions held in Japan and abroad. Since being invited to the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), he is increasingly considered an important artist indicative of new painting trends in Japan. Kato depicts human figures with large heads, small limbs, and emphatically rounded bellies. The figures are striking for the distant expression in their perfectly round eyes. Kato does not use a brush, preferring to paint directly with a finger on a rough texture canvas. The ‘humans’ he creates in this manner are loosely connected with background lines evoking mountains or water. They impart to us the vibrations of life and the rhythms of creatures’ sympathetic vibrations with nature, often with plants growing from a part of their body. From the mid-2000s, he has also created wood sculptures, and in recent years he is turning to unusual media such as soft vinyl to produce three-dimensional works that seem strangely alive. Depicted is an unclothed human figure with a large head and small arms and legs. The roundness of the figure’s body is accentuated, and the facial expression – with round, widely spaced eyes, gazing somewhere in the distance – is striking. We can just barely discern its gender, male or female, but guessing whether it is an adult or child is harder. The work in oils, "Untitled", is painted on two, upper and lower canvases with discontinuous backgrounds. The lone figure appears to exist across two different spaces, so that the painting, along with the figure’s primitive, mysterious appearance, exudes a strange ethereality. In the "Untitled" works rendered on paper, the figure is backed by a mountain, at times in a dark color and at times in a color close to white. The ‘humans’ Kato portrays stand with ambiguous expressions, closely connected with the ‘ground,’ which can be either the soil supportive of life or a chaotic space-time. They seem to embody Kato’s own inquiry into the life force and spirituality that is fundamental to their existence, and the existence of the world around them. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.