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Lot Essay
There is a subtle yet powerful, primitive nature to Izumi Kato's works. His original paintings feature doll-like characters with larger-than-life lollipop heads, rounded bodies, and piercing eyes that gaze directly at the viewer. In his recent works, Kato maintains the same powerful image of figure and ground, but exaggerates the sexual organs of the figures, sometimes deliberately creating ambiguity in the gender of the figures. The form, with its exaggerated sexual features and wide-opened eyes, recall the mysterious clay figurines (dogu) of prehistoric Japan in the Jomon period, which carries an association of fertility and shamanistic rites.
In Untitled (Lot 539), the young boy is depicted as an abstracted form of child-like anatomy; his hands and feet that are without fingers and toes, seem to portray their loss of functionality; and the growth of two other smaller heads on top of his, create more bizarreness in the picture. Kato draws focus to the large eyes by using jarring colours to depict them, emphasizing their vacant, haunting gaze. The flat background of bold red and yellow, on one level, recalls the atmosphere at sunrise and dawn, on another the deep red also brings to mind association with blood. There is a sense of things being askew in the painting, and this is amplified by the compression of the figure between two planes of complementary red and green hues in the background.
As such, Kato's portrayal of the doll-like, ambiguously-gendered and sexually exaggerated pre-pubescent human form has been interpreted at times as a reflection of the trappings of contemporary Japanese society. Through his images, Kato not only explores the notion of an extended childhood and reluctance to mature and age in contemporary Japanese society, but also points to gender and age as the ultimate primal elements of universal human existence.
In Untitled (Lot 539), the young boy is depicted as an abstracted form of child-like anatomy; his hands and feet that are without fingers and toes, seem to portray their loss of functionality; and the growth of two other smaller heads on top of his, create more bizarreness in the picture. Kato draws focus to the large eyes by using jarring colours to depict them, emphasizing their vacant, haunting gaze. The flat background of bold red and yellow, on one level, recalls the atmosphere at sunrise and dawn, on another the deep red also brings to mind association with blood. There is a sense of things being askew in the painting, and this is amplified by the compression of the figure between two planes of complementary red and green hues in the background.
As such, Kato's portrayal of the doll-like, ambiguously-gendered and sexually exaggerated pre-pubescent human form has been interpreted at times as a reflection of the trappings of contemporary Japanese society. Through his images, Kato not only explores the notion of an extended childhood and reluctance to mature and age in contemporary Japanese society, but also points to gender and age as the ultimate primal elements of universal human existence.