ART-PRESENTATION: Izumi Kato

Izumi’s Kato paintings and sculptures feature ‘primitive’ looking creatures that resemble babies or spirits locked up in bodies with imprecise forms, stripped of nationality, race, and age. Sometimes expressed in uncertain colours with no clear boundaries, sometimes in dazzlingly bright colors, they may evoke weirdness, cuteness, emptiness or violence, as they explore the relationships of human interaction.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Perrotin Archive

Although they draw from primitive imagery, Izumi’s Kato works exist on their own terms and in their own spheres of reference and are positioned firmly at the cutting edge of contemporary art. Kato uses rubber spatulas to paint the motifs and swathes of color for his grounds. He also uses his fingers, clad in vinyl gloves, to trace the fragile contours of his figures. For Kato, painting is an extra-natural form of expression that competes with the real world and allows him to create a separate universe in which the imaginary matters as much as reality. In Kato’s work, where ancient and modern times merge, as do intuition and intellect, body and mind are joined in the fluctuating forms and bursts of color that punctuate these mysteriously human forms. According to Kato, “The relationship between the painting and me is an equal one and I do all I can, with everything I have, to make sure it’s always fresh. The ideal situation is when what is happening on the canvas is in harmony with what you might call ‘the will to paint’”. In 2005 Kato also turned to sculpture. Deliberately avoiding materials that are easy to mould such as clay and resin, at first he was working only in wood, carving directly and after that from supple plastic, a material that allows the artist to paint, cut and twist as his work progresses. Once again he focuses consistently on human figures, chisel marks and cracks left like idiosyncrasies of the flesh. That he always colors these roughly hewn bodies indicates that for Kato, they are in extension in his painting. Some of his works are equipped with legs or castors resembling those on desks and chairs. Through the classical techniques of painting and sculpture, the artist reflects physicality, practicing an unrefined yet direct, shareable, real artistic expression in a contemporary world where virtual elements proliferate.

Info: Galerie Perrotin, 909 Madison Avenue & 73rd Street, Upper East Side, New York, Duration: 7/1-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.perrotin.com