Izumi Kato @ Stephen Friedman Gallery

Spread across Stephen Friedman Gallery’s two spaces on Old Burlington Street is the first UK solo exhibition of Japanese artist Izumi Kato. Through this exhibition, Kato brings us works created in the last three years in different materials and forms relating to his interest in the human figure. 

With his unique humanoid creatures, Kato creates a liberal land for spirits to thrive through the combination of religion and infinite nature. Applying pigments to surfaces with his fingers, Kato slowly and gently makes a delicious artificial séance at Stephen Friedman Gallery.

Installation view, Izumi Kato.

Immediately I was attracted to and challenged by Kate’s unknown figures once I stepped into the gallery space. 

To find my footing, I sought help from the works’ titles. To my surprise, there was no solace found there; Kato names all his works ‘Untitled,’ which deliberately avoids the interpretational tendency that may be derived from the title of a work. 

Then, I tried to re-observe these strange creatures in detail with my pre-iconographic knowledge. The figures still need to be discovered. They encompass strange images of children with sly faces, embryos with fully developed limbs, or ancient souls used to vicissitudes but fixed in a vaguely human form. Whatever meaning these paintings may entail, to me, Kato's strong personal style emphasises a sense of the existence of the primitive, original human being. 

Figure 2:  Untitled, 2022. Oil on canvas, 126.5 x 91.5cm. Framed:131 x 96.1cm.

Figure 3:  Untitled, 2022. Oil on canvas, 14 x 80.5cm. Framed:119 x 85.7cm.

With the gradation of blended skin and straightforward yet prominent facial structures in Figure 2 and Figure 3, Kato seems to colours the embryonic medical images of human beings and reconstructs the scene of a child immersed in its mother's amniotic fluid. I realised that the exploration or questioning of his works is, in fact, a self-mirroring journey of the individual viewer and the imagination of the whole human community. By depicting some humanoid creature, Kato tries to establish an echoing link between his works and the viewer and visualise a return to the embryo, the primitive state, and the matrix.

Figure 4: Untitled, 2022. Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 261cm. 

Except for these unidentifiable faces, Kato also collaged them with the torsos of animals like the four-legged beast in Figure 4. This highly personal and mystical image-creating approach is related to his growth environment. Kato grew up in Shimane Prefecture on the southwestern coast of Japan, which is one of the birthplaces of ancient Japanese culture. The inhabitants of his hometown regard all kinds of animals and plants in nature as deities, which is the belief from Shintoism, a pantheistic and polytheistic religion. The consistent tradition of spirit worship in Kato's work is rooted in this kind of childhood upbringing and subtle influence. As all things have spirits and live on, Kato has refined beings from an alternate reality with his art alchemy.

Figure 5: Untitled, 2020. Wood, plastic models, soft vinyl, stone, thread, acrylic paint, stainless steel, 187 x 140 x 80cm. 

Suppose the embryonic head is the attempt to return to the initial state. In that case, the torso belonging to the animal part and the fully developed secondary sexual characteristics suggest the fertility cult. Kato’s depiction of the chaos within the body, like in Figure 4 and the connection between the human body and the animal, reminds me of Francis Bacon's work. However, while Bacon’s work is full of tension, Kato unfolds the animal nature of human beings before us in a more vivid and childlike way.

Figures 6 & 7: Untitled, 2022. Wood, acrylic paint, stone, and stainless steel, 38.5 x 8 x 8cm. 

Except for his painting works, there are many sculptures of different sizes in the gallery space, presenting a variety of scenarios with these creatures rather than a close-up of their gestures in his 2D works. For example, in Figure 5, he uses this human-sized sculpture to imagine a scene in which every creature lives. Another central sculpture carved in wood resembles an aircraft located in the centre of the first gallery space. Meanwhile, other small sizes sculptures, like Figure 6, resemble shrine tokens, adding a sense of divinity to the whole minimal space as if protecting their elves’ kingdom. 

Kato creates all his works by putting on rubber gloves, painting with his fingers, and listening to his inner instructions, stopping when it is time to do so. This intuitive approach to painting and these sculptures’ wood texture also add a sense of raw spirituality and roughness to his works.

Figure 8: Untitled, 2022. Oil on canvas, 117.5 x 153.5cm.

For me, Kato’s simplistic human figures look like aliens but also look like primitive people. On the one hand, his brush directed backtrack to the primordial and maternal body. On the other hand, he refers to the unknowable vision of outer space and the future with strange limbs and appearances. Sharing visual images of primitive humans and extraterrestrial beings, his paintings and sculptures allow for the coexistence of justice and evil, innocence and weirdness. Like in Figure 8, Kato also uses dual segmentation to add a wealth of visual information to the images. The contrast of colours creates the dichotomy between yin and yang, human and animal, inside and outside, and so on. Presenting an ethereal state of wandering in nature, these sprites affirm the meaning of life in a volatile and creepy atmosphere.

Figures 9 & 10: Untitled, 2022. Oil on canvas, 162 x 261cm.

Looking into the details in Figures 9 and 10, the chaos of these creatures' inside bodies may also depict the spirit and soul. The divinity that Kato constructs and believes reflects not only animism but also emphasises the correspondence between the internal structure of the human body and the external world. According to art critic Lin Ye, Kato's creation is a typical act of 'discovering oneself in the terroir.' In the process of sensing the external environment and his own body, Kato realises the discovery of self and life. These images he created have the spiritual power to penetrate the secret realm of the human mind, and they preserve the initial memory of human beings as uninvolved observers.

I am excited to see how the partnership between the Stephen Friedman Gallery and Izumi Kato will grow.

Although this show at Stephen Friedman has now closed, another solo exhibition for Izumi Kato, PARASITIC PLASTIC MODELS, is still on view at the Watari Museum, Tokyo, until 12 March 2023.

All artworks © Izumi Kato. Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Perrotin. 

Bibliography:

Perrotin. “Izumi Kato - Artist.” PERROTIN. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.perrotin.com/artists/Izumi_Kato/177#biography. 

Perrotin. “Izumi Kato - Contemporary Art Exhibition.” PERROTIN. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.perrotin.com/exhibitions/izumi_kato/7882. 

Red Brick Museum. “Izumi Kato.” Red Brick Art Museum. Accessed January 15, 2023. http://www.redbrickartmuseum.org/exhibitions/izumi-kato/?lang=en. 

Stephen Friedman Gallery. “Izumi Kato.” Stephen Friedman Gallery. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.stephenfriedman.com/artists/99-izumi-kato/. 

Chenhui Wang

Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED