An array of recent exhibitions in Kyoto and Osaka offers an engaging cross section of contemporary art practice in western Japan.
Fifty-two year-old Masahito Katayama's most ambitious recent work, the 1,000-piece "Membrane" (2004), which took just shy of a year to complete, is showing at Osaka's Nomart Contemporary Art. The number of pieces in the work refers to the 1,001 sculptures of the 1,000-armed Senju Kannon in Kyoto's Sanjusangendo, which give off an unearthly golden glow in the dark shadows of their surroundings. The Fukuoka-based Katayama made the surfaces of the pieces either reflective or absorptive — like the surface of water — so that the eye keeps darting and pausing, suspended indefinitely.
The work is spread over three of Nomart's walls, and the circular shapes have microscopic-like organic patterns of dots and meshes painted on them in yellows and purples. The designs are botanical, though there is a definite abstract appeal to his works as in Monet's late "Water Lily" paintings from Giverny.