I visited Naritaka Sato’s solo exhibition “DUAL”. The venue is Minna no Gallery in Ueno.
As expressed in the show’s title “DUAL”, the exhibited works give shape to the duality of the human being.
Having graduated from the design course at Tokyo University of the Arts,
The works are built on a base of pencil drawing, over which acrylic paint is layered so as to cover the central part of the face.
The pencil drawing sections are highly detailed, suggesting formidable draftsmanship.
Many of the subjects that appear in the works are apparently fashion models gathered from the Internet.
The only oil painting in the show is a 2016 work.
Perhaps it is precisely when things we would normally see are presented as invisible that we can imagine the truth beneath the surface.
Above precise drawings, the paint moves with an almost violent momentum. The work evokes the duality we all unconsciously perform, and seems to carry an important realization within it.
The writer felt compelled to have his own portrait painted.
To have my current self faithfully copied, and then over that to have paint negate the current self as if to destroy it – to see, through this act of overwriting, the “DUAL” self existing there, a new self… such was the impulse that came over me.
