In Izumi Kato’s surreal work, stones seem to drift, our bodies disappear in water, and ft grow to be fish tails. In his new eponymous solo exhibition at Perrotin, two- and three-dimensional works converge in a dreamlike grouping the place time slips, our bodies morph, and area is concurrently flattened, compartmentalized, and stretched.
The Tokyo- and Hong Kong-based artist’s observe has developed from portray to incorporate wooden varieties, delicate vinyl sculptures, and forged steel. As Kato explores materiality, his sculptures emerge from the identical nearly alchemical method to canvas. He paints the tiny picket figures with the identical method he does a flat floor, and the stones are literally light-weight forged aluminum, which at instances the artist suspends from the ceiling in a play on notion.
Kato has lengthy painted what he refers to as hitogata, which accurately means “dolls” in Japanese. These humanoid figures usually emerge from totem-like stacks of a number of canvases that evoke the surrealist drawing strategy of cadavre exquis, or beautiful corpse. The figures’ eyes swirl like tiny swimming pools, and their noses and mouths uncannily merge, mixing into nebulous varieties across the brow or the thoughts. Generally their limbs or torsos transmogrify into amphibious legs or the refractions of sunshine in water. Their enigmatic options and vacant stares transcend time; they could be visiting from the longer term, or they could possibly be ancients.
A repeating motif of marine creatures nods to Kato’s longtime love of fishing, itself a primordial human exercise. An uncanny picket sculpture perched on a stand consisting of two rods, for example, has the trophy-like look of an aquatic animal or a lure, and its small rider evokes a form of non secular or metaphysical connection between people and the ocean. Different compositions incorporate an above-and-below view of pelagic ecosystems replete with coral, jellyfish, and a shark.
Kato’s protagonists appear to alternate between showing and disappearing into their environment, their expressions inscrutable. Do they really feel threatened? Hopeful? Involved? In an exhibition essay, Katonah Museum of Artwork director and chief curator Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe says, “When thought-about as a complete, this new physique of labor affirms the plain bond between humanity and nature, and the enduring continuum of the artistic impulse throughout chronologies and geographies to hunt the reply of what it means to be human.”
The exhibition opens tomorrow and continues by means of December 19 in New York Metropolis.
