Mamoth is pleased to announce KAITO Itsuki's first European and London solo exhibition, opening at the gallery from December 7, 2022.
KAITO Itsuki pairs bold coloration with elastic narratives in which humans, animals, and imagined creatures metamorphosis and come to terms with identification. Itsuki came of age in Sapporo, Hokkaido during the turn of the 21st century, when the expanded possibilities of the world wide web allowed for the overwhelming influx of visual materials.
Her referential database is informed by nonhierarchical images insofar as she wasn't in proximity to much fine art growing up. The emergent mythologies that Itsuki formulates are reflexive prompts for the viewer to contend with social and psychological structures. Individual peculiarities are weighed against cultural mores in an effort to expand the self beyond the bounds of an implicit order. Itsuki achieves this outcome by utilising both cute and austere imagery, tracking the semiotics of her forms and pursuing the potential within unlikely combinations.
KAITO Itsuki is a 2022 recipient of a KUMA Foundation Grant. She lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
KAITO Itsuki collects her references everywhere from the street to museums—her current tenure in London providing a fresh database to pull from. She embarks from a place of curiosity, paying mind to the unique patterns of medical illustrations and the ways they connect to the sensing body. These paintings contain specific stories as Itsuki seeks to create work that deals with the system of identification. However, she maintains that it is not necessary for these narratives to be clear to the viewer, and that she encourages disparate understandings of her visual forms. Itsuki's content is auto-generated as she moves between her paintings, carrying aspects from previous works to new ones. Her intuitive colour selection places the onus on contrasting tones rather than gradation. Grotesque shades of brown collide with candy pinks and blues to a satisfying effect. Itsuki ensures that the compositions are tonally resolved despite their unlikely colour arrangements.
MAMOTH is a contemporary art gallery based in London, with an international profile, established in 2018 and dedicated to presenting interdisciplinary visual art. Today the gallery collaborates with emerging and mid-career artists working in different media, approaches and genres
