Shoji Kato

17.5. - 27.7.2014

My Marks: Third Movement

My Marks: Third Movement explores the relationship between naming and anonymity. Shoji Kato composes situations with traces of action. ‘As an author or composer, I observe and arrange interplays between various things that involve and support what seem to be “my marks”.’

Previously, Kato has produced three shows under the My Marks theme. In the new one at Kunsthalle Studio, Kato uses different types of objects and images to suggest human activities and fascination with gold, such as archived museum specimens, commodified gold pieces, as well as a number of found gold name rings in the hip-hop style. Some of the rings carry the same name; these are also depicted in photographs of the hands of two people. Additionally, the unsettling place of subjectivity is presented in sets of ‘mirror images’ in abstract paintings and synchronized video projections. The method creates tension between the replaceable and the irreplaceable. All the elements in this show are intertwined, filling Kunsthalle Studio with a feeling of wonder and miracle in everyday life.

Shoji Kato lives and works and Helsinki, Finland. He has studied at Academie voor Beeldende Vorming, Amsterdam, and earned a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase College. He has an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, and is currently working on artistic research in the Academy’s DFA programme. Shoji Kato has shown his work in many countries: USA, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, Italy, China, Great Britain, Ireland, Hungary and Finland. In summer 2014, a public work by Kato will be installed in the Saalasti Hall at the University of Oulu. Kato has works in a number of public collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki.