KAITO Itsuki’s Expansion of the Self at MAMOTH
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Featuring plush animals, writhing hands, and human bodies in bondage, KAITO Itsuki's recent oil paintings in The Monopolistic Sweet Spots at MAMOTH, London, expands her ongoing exploration of identity and selfhood (7 December–14 January 2023).
Exhibition view: KAITO Itsuki, The Monopolistic Sweet Spots, MAMOTH, London (7 December 2022–14 January 2023). Courtesy the artist and MAMOTH.
Itsuki's artistic process begins digitally, with the drawings she makes on her iPad. 'But canvas has infinite dpi,' she says, describing the easy transition from the iPad to a physical canvas. Visible brushstrokes and textured surfaces produce an effect of rawness in Itsuki's paintings, reflecting her belief that the painted image will never be as precise as a digital work on the screen.
As a result, forms are not always crisp, and it is often the bold colouration that helps separate entities from one another. The large blue hand in Amazones and Bijous (in a box) (2021), for example, stands out against the dark background, while its contours soften around the top of the fingers. To its left, a smaller figure—consisting of a feral animal head on a yellow box—has been rendered similarly, with distinguishable but rough outlines.
Amazones, the hand with long fingernails, and the chimera-like Bijous in a box are two of the three characters or categories that dominate Itsuki's paintings. Each relates to a state of gaining an identity, with the fierce Amazones representing power, strength, and ego, and Bijous embodying both a confused and rebellious phase. The third, Petz, are what the artist calls 'tamed animals', appearing as dogs or stuffed animals that symbolise a state of obedience and a lack of self-identity.
Although it is tempting to establish a hierarchy of the three states, relegating the subservient Petz to the undesirable, Itsuki maintains that embracing all of them is crucial for fully discovering 'our real selves'—an idea that she continues to explore at MAMOTH. That balance between the three states seems attainable in Tiger Poet (Matter Material) (2022), in which a tiger head is mounted on a tripod. The paw-shaped legs, painted respectively in red, blue, and yellow, are also labelled as 'A', 'B', and 'P', standing for Amazones, Bijous, and Petz.
Even with the acceptance of all three states, however, self-discovery may not be granted—an arrow penetrates each paw, and sharp tools and excrement rain on either side of the tiger head, challenging its equilibrium.
Physical obstacles reappear in paintings like Tight Intelligence (head gear) (2021) and Tight Intelligence (Three Tubes) (2022), where the human figure is constrained by belts, straps, chains, and mechanical gears. The bondage, paired with reference to the intangible in the titles, alludes to the different kinds of restrictions imposed on our existence, whether physically or psychologically.
Elsewhere, Itsuki portrays stuffed animals with contents that belie their lovable exterior in an examination of individual identity and its multiplicity in public and private spaces. The dolphin-shaped plush bag in Inside of tameness (Dolphin bag and heart) (2022), depicted as a darkened silhouette with a dotted outline in white, contains bondage belts in its stomach. In Petz (Yellow in Sea otter bottle) (2022), a side section of the animal-shaped bottle reveals a yellow liquid that, surrounded by a grim grey and bluish pink colour scheme, does not seem so harmless.
Despite the apparent duality of her stuffed animals, Itsuki does not pass judgement on them nor is her work a critique on false appearances. Presented in cross-sections, Inside of tameness and Petz recall X-rays or medical illustrations, whose function is to simply show what is. What we present to the world and what we feel inside are bound to be different; both, nevertheless, are parts of our individual selves.
One's experience of the self is a uniquely private experience in The monopolistic sweet spots (Effects of stimulates) (2022), depicting a human leg in vibrant blue against an orange-and-green chequered background. Combs of various sizes and shapes brush against the leg, conjuring a physical reaction. Itsuki renders every point of contact anatomically, with tissues and veins, suggesting the specificity of bodily encounters—consisting of subjective feelings and sensations—that are unknowable to others.
Itsuki's work hangs between the imaginary and real worlds, bringing together elements that feel disjointed to reflect on the totality of the human mind. It is an untethering and rebuilding of identity through unsettling, yet recognisable, self-discovery. —[O]
