The face speaks

TEZUKAYAMA GALLERY is pleased to present The face speaks, a solo exhibition by Tomohiro Kato, opening on May 23. After completing a master’s degree at Tama Art University in 2006, Kato honed his skills at a metalworking company while establishing himself as an artist. In 2013, his work “Steel Tea Room TETTEI (2012)” was presented at the 16th Okamoto Taro Contemporary Art Award Exhibition, and he won the Okamoto Taro Award. Using iron as his medium, Kato explored works the latent boundaries embedded within society. In recent years, Kato has worked the anonymous series, in which 3D data of actual individuals with criminal records and weaponry are transformed into complex accumulations of iron wire. The works simultaneously embody the rigid, enduring materiality of iron and image-like, virtual interference patterns, creating iron sculptures that shimmer like afterimages, also the Iron oxide painting series, relief-like paintings created with his own medium incorporating finely crushed iron oxide. These works possess the reddish rust texture and heavy present of actual iron, functioning as paintings that mimic iron itself. In the tradition of Western sculpture, the bust has historically functioned as a form that separates an individual from the body and fixes them into the symbolic figure of a “person,” thereby manifesting authority and intellect. In his new works, Kato references this sculptural format while simultaneously resisting the act of fixation itself. Constructed through layers of iron rings, these sculptures possess neither continuous surfaces nor definitive mass. The face no longer exists as a unified plane, and its form is intentionally hollowed into a sign – like shell. Yet even when confronted with these dismantled physical forms, viewers cannot help but recognize the presence of a “human being”. Constructed through layers of iron rings, these sculptures possess neither continuous surfaces nor definitive mass. The face no longer exists as a unified plane, and its form is intentionally hollowed into a sign-like shell. Yet even when confronted with these dismantled physical forms, viewers cannot help but recognize the presence of a “human being.” Freed from the political and social framework of the “person”, these iron forms- reduced to points and planes reconsider the very nature of presence in sculpture. Freed from the political and social framework of the “person,” these iron forms—reduced to points, lines, and planes—reconsider the very nature of presence in sculpture. [Artist Statement] The face of the figure no longer exists as a continuous surface. Yet even when dismantled and hollowed out, we still perceive a “human” presence within it. What does the iron face speak of in its attempt to escape capture? In Western sculpture, the bust has long functioned as a symbol of authority. The individual is severed from the body through the face and fixed as a “person.” This work borrows that format while refusing to accept such fixation. The figure that emerges through the layering of ring-shaped iron possesses neither continuous surface nor stable volume. The face no longer exists as a single connected plane. And yet, we still see a “human” there. Even after dismantlement, we continue to perceive a face. What, then, does that face speak of?