hpgrp gallery New York - Yasutaka Kato: Graphic Love Songs from Tokyo

Current Exhibition

until May 24, 2009
Locus & Art Wave

Love Songs from Tokyo
The Graphic Designs of Yasutaka Kato

- Graphics is a Many Splendored Thing -

January 18 - February 2, 2007
Opening reception: Thursday, January 18, 2007, 6-9pm

hpgrp gallery is pleased to announce its forthcoming presentation, the first New York exhibition of work by Yasutaka Kato, which will include a comprehensive selection of this well-known, Japanese graphic designer’s posters, typography and art-collage creations.

Best known for his work for the music industry, Tokyo-based Kato is one of Japan’s most imaginative graphic designers. For many years, he served as the head art director of the in-house design department of Sony Records in Japan. In the mid-1990s, this self-described, contemporary surrealist founded Ghost Ranch Studio and Above Us Only Sky Studio, both of which have become known for their collage-like posters, CD packaging and other graphics that blend illustration, photography and ornate, decorative elements.

Kato’s design sensibility has been deeply influenced by classic rock-album covers of the 1960s and 1970s. He describes his first encounter, at the age of ten, with Michael Cooper and Peter Blake’s now-classic cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album (1967) as one of “intense aesthetic shock.” With their dense compositions and futuristic-baroque elegance, Kato’s posters and CD covers evoke the psychedelic spirit of the graphic art that he has long admired.

Some of the designer’s most recent works, which will be on view in the exhibition, include mural-size posters inspired by centuries-old Japanese scrolls and other compositions that allude to the styles, palettes and themes of such modern-art masters as Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso. Of special interest is Kato’s mural-format “New York,” an impassioned homage to the enduring spirit of the United States’ most dynamic city in the period after the events of September 11, 2001. This expansive, multifaceted photo-collage features images of everything from Buddha statues and Salvador Dalí (one of Yasutaka’s artistic idols) to skyscrapers, an antique typewriter and an angel seated inside a giant light bulb. Kato explains that this big, new work was directly inspired by “Guernica,” Picasso’s commemoration of the fascists’ bombing of the Basque town of the same name in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.

Complex, colorful and unpredictable, the selection of 51 varied works in Kato’s exhibition will be a must-see for Japanese design fans and music lovers alike.

Artist Statement [+]

"Graphic Rimpa and Super Renaissance School of the 21st century are declared with great fanfare here!"

I was born in Tokyo, Japan in the middle of 20th century. All the artists’ works I have encountered and in close contact in my life were extremely impressive, admirable and young prominent figures of the time. I think these personal experiences and the generation I was born gave a great amount of influence to my artistic expression.

My career as the graphic designer has been in the area of jacket design of LP, CD and VIDEO. decorative design of bound (books), and poster design for movies and live theatres. While gaining experiences as a graphic designer, I have been searching for my principle of unique artistic expression. Approximately 6 years from the new century, I opened the door for the modern and classic arts I had always been admired and respected to be a part of new area.

What I admired are the innovative artistic style of Sotatu Tawaraya who lived at the beginning of the 17th century in Japan and the perfecting design aesthetic completed by Korin Ogata who lived about 100 years after Tawaraya. I was also impressed and admired the richly sentimental and ultra romantic works which go beyond the religious effects of the Renaissance arts represented by Gitto Di Bondone who was prominent at the beginning of the 14th century in Italy and Leonardo Da Vinci. In addition, the artists I admire the most (I can call them as my hero) are Gustav Klimt in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, Salvador Dali and Giorgio De Chirico.

My principle for arts has been beginning to nourish based on using, fusing and re-expressing the decorative art of Rinpa and visual manipulation of modern design expression method. Rimpa (the School of Rim) is defined as a group of artists and craftsman using the methodology of gold or silver leaf on the background or bold and design patterns, which name was taken from “rim” of, Ko-“rin” Ogata, who was one of the major figures who founded this methodology during the Edo period in Japan.While going back and forth on the border between the admirable Western arts having the universal nature and issue of the global and the Eastern arts, my desire to create the image consisting of the classics and vividness within the modern graphic art with my passionate message and open neutral has become stronger and my principle.

I sincerely believe and am confirmed that it is my role to pursuit the principle that happened to live in this time on the earth as destiny. Finally, I have always been appreciative for the visual art being able to be applied to the present popular culture, music and literature. I feel extremely enthusiastic about such a fortunate encounter! and hope the title of my exhibition “Graphic Love Songs” will convey my enthusiasm for the “harbinger”.

Artist Bio [+]

Biography

1957. 5
Born in Tokyo.

1970. 3
Graduated from Ohara Elementary School, Shinagawa District

1973. 3
Graduated from Ebara High Junior High School, Shinagawa District

1976. 3
Graduated from Hibiya High School, Tokyo

1978. 3
Graduated from Musashino Arts Junior College, Commercial Design Dept.
*From May, 1978 to Sep. 1979, lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco, U.S.
Worked in the Design Office of Rod Dyer, the Art Director, as an assistant in Los Angeles.

1979. 10
Employed at “Editorial House +b (Hideo Ichikawa President)”.
*Worked on editorial design of a magazine, “Yuh”, of Kosakusha.

1980. 6
Employed at Japan Design Center.
*Served as an assistant of Makoto Saito and Kenzo Nakagawa.
*Created advertisement design for Toyota Motor Corporation, Isetan Company Limited, and Hattori Clock Store.

1982. 2
Employed at EPIC Sony Records Japan, Inc. as a Graphic designer.

1986. 4
Transferred to Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), Inc.
(used to be CBS Sony Records, Inc.)
*Spent 8 years as the Art Director.
*During 12 years (including at EPIC Sony Records Japan, Inc which is one of the Sony group) at Sony, engaged in designing the jacket of LP, LD and Video.
Main artists I engaged in designing were: Rat's & Star, George Tokoro, Motoharu Sano, Ippu-Do, Cyndi Lauper, Wham, Seikima-II, Toshinobu Kubota,
The Bubblegum Brothers, Rebecca, The Boom, Melon, Kome Kome Club, Onyanko Club, Beastie Boys, Grass Valley, The Rolling Stones, Hubert Kah, Midnight Oil, Ryudogumi, Ryoko Moriyama, Mayumi Itsuwa, Seiko Matsuda, etc.

1994. 4
Founded the company, “Ghost Ranch Studio”, CEO.
*Mainly design book's bounds, theatrical posters and pamphlets.
*Main clients: Yoko Ono, Soul Flower Union, Mescaline Drive, Echoes of Youth, Gekidan Shinkansen, Yoshikazu Mera, JAP Factory, Inc. Demi Semi Quaver,
Moonriders, Pierrot, Asylum Street Spankers, Takashi Sorimachi, etc.

*Lectured and presented slide show of my works at the Japan Society, New York in Feb. 2000.

*A member of Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc.

AwardsYear

1980 to 1990
NACC Exhibition, Design Forum Exhibition, Asahi Newspapers Advertisement Award, Mainichi Newspapers Advertisement Award, ADC Award, JAGDA Award, N.Y.ADC Award, and works selected for Warsaw Biennale Exhibition, Bruno Biennale Exhibition.

Published Works on Design Magazines and Design Fine Arts Books

1990
Specially featured in the “A Pictorial World in Music” of “PIA Music Complex” magazine.

1992
In the cooperative project with Cross World Connections of P.I.E. Books Publisher, created “The Graphic Beat: London/Tokyo”.
Works published along with Jamie Reid,Peter Saville, Russell Mills and Tadanori Yokoo.

1994
Featured in the “Design in Japan” of the German magazine, “Page”, with other Japanese artists as Ikko Tanaka and Katsumi Asaba.
Works were introduced in the design magazine, “Macintosh Designers Network”.

1999
Works were introduced in the magazine, “New Design: Tokyo /The Edge of Graphic Design (Rockport Publisher)”, Series Edition of Edward M. Gomez.
Specially featured in “Module No. 6”, edited by Hiroshi Sunto Art Director.

2002
Works were used for the educational material of “Visual Design 5/Computer Graphics (Rokuyousha Publisher)” of JAGDA textbook (Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc.).

1998
Works are introduced every year since the first edition of “Mdn Designers File (Mdn Publisher)” to the present.