【On Satoru Kurata and his work:
worthlessness and beauty from a personal standpoint 】 

During his first solo exhibition at our gallery, Kurata said that his practice could be read in terms of “worthlessness and beauty.” He has been producing work from a personal standpoint, in response to the question of whether life is devoid of meaning and worthless, forms of beauty that exist in spite of this, and the movements of our hearts and minds.

In his childhood, Kurata had an extreme fear of death and the nocturnal act of sleeping that is similar to death. To alleviate this, he came to believe that life and death are equally worthless.The accompanying feelings of lethargy, apathy, and worthlessness gradually came to torment him. The ambiguity and sensation of the emptiness of human existence that Kurata felt in his father’s car when he was in his 20s, seen in such works as Hollow Drive (2018-2019), which emerged from the feeling of being carried along as if he had become invisible, to a point where there was little to differentiate himself from the luggage, developed into a unique form of painterly expression.

【On “Night Waiting for Morning” and Kurata’s new works in this exhibition】

The objects depicted in the new works on display at this exhibition have changed dramatically. Previously, Kurata’s motifs were mostly imagined from memory: dusk, the sea, night, cars, eggs, dogs, sleeping, and so on. Since moving to the suburbs where there are many elderly people several years ago, however, Kurata began to paint people, plants, nature, animals, and daytime scenes that he saw daily in his studio, home, and the surrounding areas as concrete subjects for his paintings.

The gap between Kurata’s current life in the countryside and the city and the world, the physical and mental decline he experienced in his thirties, and the death of his elderly neighbors may have imbued his previously nihilistic existence with a greater sense of reality through comparisons with others, as well as changes to his own life.

Kurata’s new work Night Waiting for Morning is a self-portrait of himself lying down in his studio, with succulent plants in the background that he actually grows. The paintings within this painting are images of his previous works.

Another new work, In a Tree of the Night, is a painting of a thicket of trees in Kurata’s neighborhood. According to him, the initial intention was to depict two people walking in a wooded area in bright daylight. As he worked on it, however, it changed to a wooded area at night, and three people appeared. While Kurata himself initially proceeds with his work based on fleeting images and words, he only realizes why he is painting them as he goes along, or after they are completed. His works are devices for self-awareness that encompass trajectories of thought and time.

On the occasion of this exhibition, Kurata wrote the following text.

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Hello Man
Night Waiting for Morning
Person with Umbrella
Yellow Green Mountain
Empty Room
Eye of Spider
In the Land of Children
Weeds and Figure
Under the Sun
Embrace
The Moon is Watching for Us
Bird or Old Man
Rat and Walnut
Person with Flower Name
Unfinished Conversation
Monkey Pointing Finger
A Room at Dusk
In a Tree of the Night
Laughter and Spasms

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These works feel turbulent yet calm. Everything seems to be coincidental, and viewers feel as if something in them is related to them. Their humor, meanwhile, is somehow redeeming.

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