Izumi Kato’s Fluid Forms Blur the Line Between Canvas and Space

Colour and texture move fluidly across the gallery walls and floor at Perrotin New York, where Izumi Kato’s sculptural and painterly practice converge in a meditation on form, surface and the permeable boundary between two and three dimensions. Working simultaneously in oil on canvas, cast aluminium, plastic, fabric and wood, the artist refuses the traditional separation of disciplines, instead orchestrating a conversation between his paintings and sculptures that feels both intimate and expansive.

The exhibition reveals Kato’s particular sensibility: a painter’s eye applied to sculptural form, where colour is not merely applied but considered as integral to the spatial presence of each work. His surfaces hold the gestural quality of brushwork, the tactile evidence of making, whether rendered in metal or woven into fabric. There is a quiet rigour here, a refusal of decoration that makes each chromatic choice resonate with intention.

Aquatic imagery moves throughout the exhibition like a thread, drawing on Kato’s lifelong fascination with fishing and the ocean. Fish and coral forms emerge across canvases and sculptures, their flowing, organic silhouettes contrasting with the geometric precision of his materials and forms. This tension between the natural and the constructed, between movement and stillness, gives the work its particular poetry.

Scale shifts throughout the gallery, disrupting conventional expectations of how we encounter artworks. What reads as intimate on canvas swells into monumental form in sculpture, whilst smaller sculptural pieces demand the close attention usually reserved for painting. This deliberate dissonance challenges the viewer’s spatial relationship to the work, inviting a physical engagement that moves beyond passive observation.

The hand’s presence is felt throughout, whether in the brushstroke, the cast surface that captures the memory of its mould, or the carefully constructed forms in wood and plastic. There is no machine precision here, no cold distance; instead, Kato’s works carry the warmth of material knowledge and the artist’s sustained, considered engagement with his chosen forms.

Perrotin also presents a selection of coloured lithographs by the artist, including a set of untitled prints, available at the gallery’s New York location and online. These works extend Kato’s investigation into colour and composition, offering another facet of his fluid, multivalent practice.

Imagery courtesy of Perrotin (@perrotin).