Reflection & Repetition

Tokyo International Gallery, announces
Group Exhibition “Reflection & Repetition”

Tokyo International Gallery (Shinagawa, Tennozu) is pleased to present “Reflection & Repetition,” a group exhibition by three up-and-coming artists, Kengo Kito, Hal Osawa, and Koga Miura.

There is a “nature” that emerges through the thoroughness of human craftsmanship (ars) and technology (techne). On the other hand, there are also “natural” techne and ars which emerge through the thoroughness of “nature”.

What Koga Miura and Hal Osawa develop is a way of creating rules and systems that constrain artistic production, and then, after artificially and consciously controlling the techniques and methods, showing the breakdown of those rules and systems. Therefore, artifice and technique themselves are foregrounded, and “nature” appears with the “breakdown. It is as if to say that only in this paradox does “nature” appear.

Koga Miura determines the placement of lines and color schemes to be placed by random numbers, and creates his works based on these instructions. As a result, the artist’s arbitrary decisions are eliminated and the production of the work is placed under strict control. At the same time, however, the physicality, unconsciousness, and coincidence of the artist who executes and outputs the work interfere with it.

In Osawa’s works, which are created by reproducing hand-drawn drawings with digital technology and then tracing the images by hand, the act of tracing an object as it is reveals the discrepancy and blurring between the model image and the body. What we see here is the friction and interplay between human techniques and the “nature” of the human body.

Perhaps, however, what emerges in Kengo Kito’s work is the opposite phenomenon. The paintings appear to be free from all conscious control, control, and restrictions of painting materials, and the paint spills out, making the most of chance, even to the point of wild abandon. There, Kito’s work approaches the wild “nature” itself. But as a result, in his works, a geometric structure approximating moiré or fractal, which recursively loops through the picture plane, appears, i.e., the techne of nature.

Nature always emerges from the midst of the breakdown of human technology (ars technet). But it is there that the geometry of “nature” and the order of “nature” emerge.

Artists

KENGO KITO

Kengo Kito uses ready-made objects such as hula-hoops, parasols, and scarves to create large-scale installations that incorporate rotation and circulation, such as colorfulness, reflections of mirrors and lame, and motorized movement, as well as a variety of expressive methods such as sculpture, painting, and photography. They mix a contemporary artificial sense of color and luminosity with an expansiveness that evokes life forms and the universe.

HAL OSAWA

Osawa graduated from Tama Art University, Department of Oil Painting in 2020, and Kyoto University of Arts, Graduate School of Art and Design, Department of Oil Painting in 2022. Osawa dare to make a bug in the act of “reproduction.” This act of copying has transformed the printed material into another original. Osawa produces works that visualize the ambiguity of value by making analog reproductions of digital reproductions.

MITSUMASA MIURA

Miura creates two-dimensional works based on the main themes of “coincidence” and “artifice/randomness.” By using random numbers and written instructions at the decision-making stage, such as composition and color scheme, he eliminates conscious artifice. By doing so, the artist’s work is purely random, and the blurring and coincidence of the output of the body are allowed to emerge. Just as a mechanically-drawn work following instructions has its own unique expression, he finds contingency even in the most ordinary days, and continues to work to affirm the irregularity of events.

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