Izumi Kato's exhibition

Perrotin Seoul presents a solo exhibition by Japanese contemporary artist Izumi Kato. This marks his second solo show at the gallery, following his first in 2018. Born in 1969 in Shimane, Japan, Kato graduated from Musashino Art University in 1992 and has since been based in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Beginning his career in painting, he has expanded his practice to include works made with natural materials such as wood and stone, creating primitive and totemic forms. Kato’s work challenges conventional notions of painting and sculpture, offering a fresh perspective that invites contemplation on the essential and conscious dimensions of art. Centered on the artist’s new works, this exhibition offers a visual exploration of the nature of human existence and a sense of universal human sensitivity.

Hailing from Japan’s Shimane Prefecture, artist Izumi Kato regularly depicts peculiar creatures that resemble humans. These lifeforms are characterized by heads that seem large in proportion to their bodies and eyes drawn with particular emphasis, as well as arms and legs that tend to taper off, ambiguous; our imagination, here, turns toward extraterrestrial beings, or perhaps spirits belonging to the natural world. Having studied oil painting at Musashino Art University, Kato initially expressed these forms as two-dimensional paintings, gradually expanding his practice into three dimensions over time by incorporating various materials like wood, stone, cloth, soft vinyl, and plastic models, as well as exploring different modes of expression like painting directly onto kimonos.

1. The artistic world of Izumi Kato

The distinctive lifeforms of Izumi Kato were not arrived at in one fell swoop; rather, they speak to a process of change that involved multiple stages. Just as an insect reaches its final form through a given process of metamorphosis, Kato’s forms evolve both consistently and sequentially, as if following a predetermined course—ultimately establishing, as a result, a singular formative language entirely his own.

1) Kato’s Painting: Indigenous faith and its dreamlike forms

While Kato works not just in painting, sculpture, and installation but crosses freely into and out of disparate fields like fashion and handicraft, painting does remain at the heart of his art—perhaps because he majored in it as an undergraduate. In other words, the artist’s approach begins by first realizing an idea or concept through painting, and then gradually expanding the result into the realm of sculpture or installation involving an array of different materials.

Izumi Kato’s painting practice can be traced back to Laborer Song, produced in 1994. In this early work, simple pupa-shaped forms are horizontally juxtaposed against one another within a monochromatic picture plane, a viscous substance flowing, stretchy and long, from the body of each figure. Though arms and legs are expressed, protruding from these torsos, hands and feet are omitted, while in the face, eyes and nose are emphasized while ears are missing entirely; all of this, in turn, moves us one step closer to Kato’s distinctive character. In 1999, we see the appearance of beings that are markedly closer to human than before, including gender expressed through genitalia and titles such as Pose, Side, Male, and Side, Female, underscoring the suggestion that these figures are meant to be living beings.

Entering the 2000s, a unique figurative form distinctive to Izumi Kato becomes set: a large head with emphasized eyes accompanies an organic yet flat body with largely undifferentiated hands and feet, posed standing, seated, or—from time to time—prone, on its side. The face is expressionless, gazing straight ahead, and though the eyes are so markedly oversized that they can appear to be gazing straight at the viewer, more often than not the pupils are actually absent, and so no real psychological connection actually takes place. At times, these characters exist in isolation, but they are also presented together in combination with nameless plants, like different trees and flowers, or even with other peculiar lifeforms, inciting a kind of formal interest along with introducing an element of tension. Moreover, by uniformly titling his works Untitled and thereby further minimizing any hints to interpret, the work of meaning making is left entirely to the viewer’s imagination.

When painting on canvas, Kato eschews use of the brush in favor of applying paint to his fingers and rubbing the pigment into the surface. A technique that predates civilization, this method of using one’s actual body in place of any tools is as primitive and fundamental as the outer appearance of a given lifeform. By rubbing the paint onto the canvas with his fingers, the artist is able to physically feel the process of the paint seeping into the canvas; moreover, even as this paint adheres more delicately to the canvas, the boundaries between different colors become blurred. As a result, Kato’s forms take on a more fluid and dreamlike atmosphere.

Kato’s paintings are sometimes split across two or three canvases, or consist of works painted on different fabrics that are then stitched together. At times, he depicts a full figure on a single canvas, or renders only the face or upper body of a creature independently, as if painting a bust or portrait. More often, however, the full figure is split across two or more canvases of varying sizes. By dividing the composition into upper and lower body, or segmenting it at the head, waist, and legs, he creates the impression of a single living being existing across different dimensions. On occasion, he also interlocks canvases depicting entirely different beings, expressing a seeming simultaneity of separate worlds.

Kato’s distinctive mode of expression is regularly interpreted as being in connection with a kind of totemism or animism rooted in traditional Japanese folk beliefs—a reading that is, in turn, closely linked to Kato’s own personal background. Shimane Prefecture, a region ringed by mountains and the sea, is both the artist’s birthplace and home to Izumo Taisha (出雲大社), one of the most important Shinto shrines in all Japan. According to one interview with the artist himself, Shinto and animistic worldviews writ large have long been key influences for Kato; indeed, his hometown, Yasugi, is known for the strength of its animistic legacy. Constantly regaled with tales of ghosts and spirits as he grew up there, he has always lived with a combination of awareness and vigilance toward such presences—a lifelong sensitivity and philosophy that permeates his art. In essence, the animistic beliefs, myths, and spirit lore that were part and parcel of his hometown day-to-day now form the very foundation of his work.

2) Kato’s Sculpture: The primitive spirit made manifest

In Pose, a piece from 1999, the lifeform leaves the bounds of the painting itself. Cutting just the body portion from the canvas, the artist paints both its front and back, roughly carving the figure’s head from wood to express its eyes and nose before installing the resulting lifeform in a corner of the exhibition space. Then, starting around 2003, he began to carve the entire lifeform out of wood, expressing the figure in three dimensions. Resembling primitive wooden dolls, Kato’s wooden works also recall Korea’s kokdu (funerary figurines); yet the primal atmosphere that imbues his paintings is consistently preserved in these sculptures as well. Here, the humanoid lifeform is expressed either alone or sometimes combined with animals or plants, and on the roughly carved wooden surface, the delicate addition of color with acrylic pigment creates a sense of mystery. Exhibited alongside Kato’s paintings or installed in special spaces such as shrines or traditional houses, these three-dimensional works effectively stimulate the imagination of the viewer in new ways.

The materials Kato uses extend beyond wood to include stone. Unlike his wooden works, his stone pieces remain in the exact form in which they were found in nature. While he sometimes works with wood or stone alone, he also combines natural materials—such as wood, stone, and leather—with industrial ones, including soft vinyl. Since 2020, he has revived his childhood passion for assembling plastic model toys and creating figures inspired by living organisms in nature, incorporating these into his sculptural practice. This interest in model-making has led to an in-depth exploration of casting and molding techniques, ultimately culminating in the production of alumi- num sculptures. Kato casts stones found in his surroundings in their unaltered state, exploring the relationship between nature’s rawness and industrial technology, as well as between mass production and the uniqueness of individual works. Like his stone sculptures, each aluminum cast is hand-painted by the artist, placing them in close dialogue with his painting practice.

2. Beyond dichotomy, into the depths of being

The paintings included in the show depict motifs related to marine life. Sea creatures like fish and conch shells appear in conjunction with the lifeforms that have effectively become Izumi Kato’s trademark. Interestingly, however, these sea creatures are expressed with a concrete specificity and delicacy that contrasts with the rather ambiguous and dreamlike nature of the humanoid forms.

When we consider that Kato grew up by the sea and claims fishing as his hobby, it is, perhaps, only natural for him to depict marine life. The sea creatures in these paintings are expressed in various ways, and regularly include species of fish the artist has personally caught while out fishing. Kato’s deep interest in marine life is distilled in the lithograph collection From the sea, published in 2023. This print collection contains scenes in which sea creatures (fish, seaweed, sea urchins, turtles, octopuses, filefish, whales, etc.) conjoin with the humanoid lifeforms he so often works with to form one body, joyfully mingling under the sea. Unlike these earlier lithograph works, however, the pieces presented in this exhibition do not depict marine life as something attached to the humanoid lifeforms; rather, they are painted separately on two or three individual canvases and placed side by side.

As we have covered thus far, Izumi Kato’s work as a whole condenses animistic imagination and post-anthropocentric thinking. Animism, as a topic that is regularly explored in the world of contemporary art, tends to appear in works that seek to capture the vitality of the natural world, the fusion of humans and nature, and communion with supernatural beings; by the same token, animism is also interpreted as a critical alternative to modern humanism and a more materialistic worldview. As such, Kato’s devotion to an animistic world can be interpreted as a new philosophical and aesthetic approach that opposes an ostensibly rational worldview centered on the West.

We must note, however, that the artist himself has not chosen this topic with the intention of conveying a specific message to the audience. What matters here is what emotions are evoked in the viewer when looking at the work, with the hope that each individual will freely exercise their imagination to appreciate, think, and feel. This is also the precise reason why, despite giving concrete titles to his earlier works, Kato has consistently defaulted to Untitled since around the year 2000. In choosing silence over any direct statement or message about any given piece, Kato invites the viewer to discard their own preconceptions and surrender to the mystery of the work before them.