Satoshi Kawata: A Letter from A Far

We are pleased to announce Satoshi Kawata’s second solo exhibition at Art Court Gallery; his first was in 2018.

Kawata has continued to create and exhibit works that question the relationship between space, people, and artistic expression, using murals as the core of his expression. His methods fuse traditional fresco painting techniques using plaster and pigments with contemporary building and design materials. In addition to this fusion of traditional technique and contemporary material, he explores the potential of new forms of expression by divorcing his works from specific walls and spaces while wrestling with the distinctive flow of time born from this disassociation.

The motif in this exhibition is the 'suburban landscape' that characterizes the era in which the artist lives. In these new works, he removes the topmost layer of his fresco images and transfers them onto canvases, a technique usually used for mural restoration. Centering around his canvases approximately 2.5 meters high and 2 meters wide, Kawata creates a unique composition that assesses the relationship between exhibition space, the work, and the human body.

Kawata establishes the connection between these superficial layers of images with no connection to specific walls and the anonymous landscapes found anywhere in the suburban outskirts of cities. His works waver at the interstice of mural and tableau, existing in a temporal space subtly distant from the 'here and now.' To the audience, he presents a somewhere that is not here, a sometime that is not now, a something that is not this. What kind of scenery will you imagine through Kawata's expression that communicates with 'A Far.'

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Artist profile

Recently Kawata has implemented a series of expressions like dismantling, moving, and reconstructing murals in his exhibitions (*1). He paints images on unfinished walls that will be covered and perhaps rediscovered decades later (*2). He applies the strappo mural restoration technique (*3), in which he removes the topmost layer of the image and places it on a temporary backing to create "suspended states" for his mural images in his installations (*4). From the initial expression evoked from the relationship with the location where the works are created, his works achieve an open structure in which the mural is independent of its physical space and are continuously renewed. The present, past, and future fluctuate based on the flow of time unique to his works and deepen into an existence pregnant with their complex intersecting dynamism.

1. A series of exhibitions in 2017: city and synergism, ALA Artist in Residence Exhibition, ALA (Art Lab Aichi) Chojamachi, and Satoshi Kawata: Sudden Death, 3rd floor at Tatsuya Building, both in Nagoya.
2. 2018, Artist in Residence at A4 Art Museum, Chengdu, China
3. Strappo is an Italian word and refers to a technique in which the image layer of the fresco is removed from the wall by glue or other means and transferred to a different base. This technique has been used for conservation and restoration since the 17th century.
4. 2018, Solo Exhibition: Open Room, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka