Japan’s Izumi Kato, whose incredible new show of paintings & sculptures is now on view at Galerie Perrotin in NYC, is an artist who began painting after laying down his brush. Eschewing tools, as if to reject any reliance on the ightiness of brushwork, he applies layer upon layer of sombre-hued pigment directly with his hands, not so much to paint as to rub the colour onto the canvas. In this way, he depicts creatures with human contours, two staring eyes, a head, hands and feet. Those bold, forceful curves, throwing into relief the human shape, those organic lines, that distortion and simplifying of form, are inevitable products of painting with the hands, and as a result, Kato’s works possess a powerful presence that seems to illuminate the core of the human body.
Kato was a relative latecomer to the art world, making his debut at the age of thirty. He had worked as a manual labourer for some years, which left him with the sense of being at one with the world that comes with corporeal achievement, and a humble appreciation of his place as just anther creature of this earth.
From here he set out on a new journey of engagement with the vast realm of painting. An artist who began with the abstract, he now depicts nothing but human gures. All Kato’s recent works are untitled, and he does not set up any speci c model to paint; nor does he draft or sketch. These paintings have no narrative element. They are dialogues, creations arising from a direct, barely suppressible physical urge to touch, a trait given play by humans since the days of prehistoric cave murals. The gures sealed within the frame of the canvas seem to radiate an enigmatic aura, their undifferentiated bodies encased in thin membranes reminiscent of a budding life form in the embrace of its mother’s amniotic uid. Kato’s is the act of capturing life through his body.
In 2005 Kato also turned to sculpture. Deliberately avoiding materials that are easy to mould such as clay and resin, he works only in wood, carving directly. Once again he focuses consistently on human gures, chisel marks and cracks left like idiosyncrasies of the esh. That he always colours 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.
Echoing Brancusi perhaps, through the pursuit of the substance of things he has arrived at the simplication of form. He also attempts to explore the possibilities of form in different materials and textures. Through the classical techniques of painting and sculpture, Kato reects physicality, practicing an unrened yet direct, shareable, real artistic expression in a contemporary world where virtual elements proliferate.
