Imura art gallery tokyo is very pleased to present the solo exhibition of Masaharu SATO "Portrait of Hiroko". Seven new digital paintings will be exhibited.
Masaharu Sato was born in 1973 in Oita, Japan. After graduating from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2000 with MFA, he spent 10 years in Germany, during which period he developed a unique animation technique of tracing photographs. He spends most of his time making art in by tracing a picture on the computer.
He traces the pictures which he took with a video camera, of the street of Dusseldorf where he stayed, and of some of his friends from the school or from the part time job, on the computer, consistently following the same rules and steps, "trying to replicate the objects without exaggerating or leaving marks and such" as he describes.
Perhaps his action of replicating photographs and the resulting images that appear to replicate the real world could closely resemble the action and the images of looking for common ground between you and the society while recognizing the gap in between, such as the difference of languages and customs.
He continues to produce art works after returning to Japan in 2010, applying the technique of tracing photographs precisely yet keeping a certain distance from the objects, using various motifs involving different movement, scenery, and sight, such as children, stuffed rabbit and bear, fish cake factory for example.
The art works in this exhibition are very close to real images, it seems like a photo exhibition at first. However, when you notice that these works were made by elaborately tracing the objects while keeping a certain distance, our possessive view will be completely rejected. You could see the artist's intention to make the viewers to reconsider the nature of the objects by themselves by actively causing confusion. "Photo of a transvestite", the motifs selected by Sato for this show will surely bring more complexity to the viewers' confusion.
*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Imura Art Gallery
