Mika Kato
16 Dec 2006 - 20 Jan 2007
MIKA KOYAMA
Supported by The Gotoh Memorial Foundation
Winter Holidays:Dec.29.Fri - Jan.8.Mon
Opening reception: Dec.16.Sat. 6 - 8pm
The Tomio Koyama Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Mika Kato, which will be held from December 16th, 2006 until January 20th, 2007.
Born in Mie prefecture in 1975, Mika Kato graduated from the art department of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music with a specialty in oil painting in 1999. She continued her studies with a master’s program at her alma mater, which she completed in 2001. The same year she received the Cultural Award for Young Artist, bestowed to the most promising young talent in the Fine Arts Division, from The Gotoh Memorial Founfation. Presently, she is working based in Mie prefecture. Her first solo exhibition at the Tomio Koyama Gallery was “Canaria” in 2000 while she a graduate student; this exhibition marks her second exhibition at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in six years.
Since her solo exhibition "Criterium 48" at Art Tower Mito in Ibaraki prefecture, she has participated in various exhibitions both in Japan and abroad. Starting in 2001 with the group exhibition "My Reality - Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation", which has held by the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, USA and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and other museums throughout America, she has gone on to exhibitions such as "CASINO 2001" (2001, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium), the exhibition "Coloriage" (2002, Cartier Foundation Modern Art Center, Paris) curated by Takashi Murakami, "New Generation Japanese Painters" (2003, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima), "Japan Rising: Contemporary Art From Japan" (2003, Palm Beach ICA, Florida), "ROPPONGI CROSSING: NEW VISIONS in CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART 2004" (2004, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), "Officina Asia" (Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy), and "Very Very Human" (2005, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan). Pieces from the 2005 solo exhibition which was held at White Cube, the Jay Jopling Gallery in London, are currently being exhibited at the Yokohama Museum of Art exhibition "Idol!".
Kato's paintings portray the beauty, cruelty, warmth, and an always-present sense of loneliness in harmony. This is sometimes presented as a momentary sense of unease, but the major brunt of this force is hidden in the unconsciousness, which is displayed by the presence of a young girl. Until now, Kato's oil paintings have featured a young girl's doll face, painted like a photo on a large canvas. She started out by making a doll by hand, a long and laborious process, she then painted a tableau of the doll. The process of crafting objects and then photographing them gave her various reference points that were gradually incorporated into the canvas; resulting in not just a simple rendition of a subject, but transformed it into a human with a living and breathing spirit. The completed paintings give off a sense of ambivalence --- the impression that reaches us is different from a somewhat cold form of lucid super-realism though her technique, while also providing another sense of magic realism that goes beyond the forces of magic. There that reaches us. The clay dolls are thoughtfully dressed with decorative beads or hats. Sometimes they are placed with animal bones, flowers, or a bird-shaped brooch which leads us to imagine the girls’ ideal world as consisting of romantic objects; all the decorations are the small friends of the girls as well. The new motif also features the intimate objects, which Kato found in various familiar places.
The motif in the work titled "Tomb for All" consists of an object composed of glass beads, which washed up along a beach. The fantastic light that resides in the beads is like a beautiful, yet unknown, sea creature that floats on the surface of the water. If all living creatures return to this place, it resembles a large grave.
This exhibition is expected to include three new paintings, six charcoal drawings, and one doll. We hope you will enjoy this opportunity to see Mika Kato’s new world, where people and all creatures live brilliant lives.
Tomio Koyama Gallery Press: Tomoko Omori, Tel +81-3-3642-4090
© Mika Kato
Tomb for All
2006
117.2x90.1cm
oil on canvas
Supported by The Gotoh Memorial Foundation
Winter Holidays:Dec.29.Fri - Jan.8.Mon
Opening reception: Dec.16.Sat. 6 - 8pm
The Tomio Koyama Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Mika Kato, which will be held from December 16th, 2006 until January 20th, 2007.
Born in Mie prefecture in 1975, Mika Kato graduated from the art department of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music with a specialty in oil painting in 1999. She continued her studies with a master’s program at her alma mater, which she completed in 2001. The same year she received the Cultural Award for Young Artist, bestowed to the most promising young talent in the Fine Arts Division, from The Gotoh Memorial Founfation. Presently, she is working based in Mie prefecture. Her first solo exhibition at the Tomio Koyama Gallery was “Canaria” in 2000 while she a graduate student; this exhibition marks her second exhibition at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in six years.
Since her solo exhibition "Criterium 48" at Art Tower Mito in Ibaraki prefecture, she has participated in various exhibitions both in Japan and abroad. Starting in 2001 with the group exhibition "My Reality - Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation", which has held by the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, USA and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and other museums throughout America, she has gone on to exhibitions such as "CASINO 2001" (2001, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium), the exhibition "Coloriage" (2002, Cartier Foundation Modern Art Center, Paris) curated by Takashi Murakami, "New Generation Japanese Painters" (2003, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima), "Japan Rising: Contemporary Art From Japan" (2003, Palm Beach ICA, Florida), "ROPPONGI CROSSING: NEW VISIONS in CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART 2004" (2004, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), "Officina Asia" (Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy), and "Very Very Human" (2005, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan). Pieces from the 2005 solo exhibition which was held at White Cube, the Jay Jopling Gallery in London, are currently being exhibited at the Yokohama Museum of Art exhibition "Idol!".
Kato's paintings portray the beauty, cruelty, warmth, and an always-present sense of loneliness in harmony. This is sometimes presented as a momentary sense of unease, but the major brunt of this force is hidden in the unconsciousness, which is displayed by the presence of a young girl. Until now, Kato's oil paintings have featured a young girl's doll face, painted like a photo on a large canvas. She started out by making a doll by hand, a long and laborious process, she then painted a tableau of the doll. The process of crafting objects and then photographing them gave her various reference points that were gradually incorporated into the canvas; resulting in not just a simple rendition of a subject, but transformed it into a human with a living and breathing spirit. The completed paintings give off a sense of ambivalence --- the impression that reaches us is different from a somewhat cold form of lucid super-realism though her technique, while also providing another sense of magic realism that goes beyond the forces of magic. There that reaches us. The clay dolls are thoughtfully dressed with decorative beads or hats. Sometimes they are placed with animal bones, flowers, or a bird-shaped brooch which leads us to imagine the girls’ ideal world as consisting of romantic objects; all the decorations are the small friends of the girls as well. The new motif also features the intimate objects, which Kato found in various familiar places.
The motif in the work titled "Tomb for All" consists of an object composed of glass beads, which washed up along a beach. The fantastic light that resides in the beads is like a beautiful, yet unknown, sea creature that floats on the surface of the water. If all living creatures return to this place, it resembles a large grave.
This exhibition is expected to include three new paintings, six charcoal drawings, and one doll. We hope you will enjoy this opportunity to see Mika Kato’s new world, where people and all creatures live brilliant lives.
Tomio Koyama Gallery Press: Tomoko Omori, Tel +81-3-3642-4090
© Mika Kato
Tomb for All
2006
117.2x90.1cm
oil on canvas