Midori Sato “Diaphanous petals”
We visited Midori Sato’s first solo museum exhibition, “Diaphanous petals.” The venue is the “Atrium Gallery” at the Pola Museum of Art.
The title of the exhibition, “Diaphanous petals,” means “translucent petals,” and all six works on view are new pieces created for this show.
Midori Sato was selected as an Overseas Fellow of the Pola Art Foundation in 2017 and spent a year in France.
Her signature “Closet” series began with her graduation work in her fourth year at university; this exhibition, however, centers on works depicting the shop windows of apparel boutiques she saw during her stay in France.
The large-scale serial work Diaphanous pink window depicts the same shop from shifting points of view.
Also on view was Flōra, a work built around the dress depicted in Diaphanous pink window I.
She begins by laying down a transparent ground so the canvas texture stays visible, then paints with heavily diluted acrylics, and switches to oil paint partway through. The soft, glowing surface — the sparkle of light, its reflections, an almost halated effect — comes through clearly.
The bold strokes and the bleeding of the paint make the clothes and dresses look almost as if souls dwelled within them, and the whole canvas seemed to radiate energy.
The bold strokes and the bleeding of the paint make the clothes and dresses look almost as if souls dwelled within them, and the whole canvas seemed to radiate energy.
Red sheer carpet belongs to her ongoing series of carpet paintings.
Paphiopedilums is a work she made while studying still-life painting at her atelier in France.
Sato works on several paintings simultaneously in her atelier, and moving between abstract and figurative modes at the same time is part of her practice.
Before leaving for France, her works tended to be more abstract; as she put it, “there were so many concrete motifs I wanted to paint” during her stay in France, and her recent output has moved overall closer to figuration.
The Atrium Gallery, adjoining the first-floor lobby of the Pola Museum of Art, is bathed in natural light that overlaps with the light emanating from Midori Sato’s works — offering visitors what felt like a genuinely comfortable space.
