Excerpt from “Manya Kato / Roko Ikeda” in the quarterly magazine “Tempyo” No. 013, Fall 2002.

　Put simply, Kato's works elaborately incorporate self-righteous insights into small questions and shifts in common sense that are ubiquitous in everyday life, reworking them with irony and humor, and presenting alternative ways of seeing the world and its possibilities. However, the works are not particularly assertive, and many of them exist in a casual manner, and the viewer may even miss the key points of their contrived formation due to the minimization of the displacement or the plainness of their presence.

　The works exhibited this time are generally small objects. They look like rings of wisdom, but are actually just one twisted stainless steel rod that cannot be separated. The screw grooves, which are supposed to be engraved in a spiral shape, are carved in parallel, making them unusable pseudo-screws. A small fan that swivels its head but does not rotate its vital blades, and so on, are a group of small objects that seem to be witty, stylish, and one-shot tricks that are devoid of any utility. They are not merely a prank, but are also a group of small accessories that are not considered as a mere prank. There is also a removable, portable hanging ring that can be used anywhere, including on trains. Kato puts it in a heavy attache case, and does not forget the poison of paradoxical inconvenience attached to convenience.

　On the other hand, there are also some stylish works, such as “Great Journey,” in which a small model sailing ship emerges from an empty bottle of a bottle ship lying on a shelf in a yardstick. A work disguised as a kit for making marble roses, like a plastic model, is an extension of the “Medicine Box Series,” a series of unique fake medicine packages that Kato has made in the past to look like over-the-counter medicines.

　In addition to art objects, Kato also creates installations and videos, but it is in his art objects that his sense of style shines through the most. The range of his works is wide, from mildly amusing works that evoke a grin to romantic works that show another world. Kato questions socially accepted understandings, common sense, perceptions, and trust, and reflects in his works a falsely malignant flip side of his silent resistance to the idleness of everyday life. However, in previous works, such consistency and explanations have not always been too eloquent. In some cases, when Kato attempts to present a viewpoint that goes against the norm by exaggeratedly cutting through social conventions and conventions, the impact of the undefinable uncertainty is diminished.

　Kato's approach of creating works based on his everyday gaze and his own concrete experience has some similarities with the works of younger artists. However, what makes Kato's work decidedly different from that of the younger generation is his refusal to simply dislocate the things of the outside world and point to the extraordinary in a disempowered way. Resolutely confronting society, institutions, and the everyday world, Kato seeks to infuse his cool works with a convincing forcefulness, but never with a sense of incompleteness, obscurity, or gentle fantasy.

　Kato's work occasionally features people with whom he has close relationships, such as fellow artists, family members, and friends in Nagoya. Kato's art is not based on Western standards that are considered universal. While absorbing such things, reality for him is the realization of the world in which he has lived. He does not present it merely as an internal fantasy, but rather, he presents his direct doubts about people's understanding, convincingly transforming them into another form with a devilish sense of humor. This is what I meant when I wrote that it is pseudo-villainous.

Shoji Inoue (Chunichi Shimbun reporter)

October 2002

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