The gallery is delighted to participate in this year’s Unlimited program with sculptures by Izumi Kato and a large-scale painting by Hernan Bas.
This pair of sculptures marks Izumi Kato’s largest aluminum presentation to date. By casting natural rocks in this lightweight metal, Kato transcends the limitations of heavy, fragile stone, creating expressively hand-painted pieces that explore the interplay between form and color, nature and the human-made, while highlighting the tension between mass production and the uniqueness of artisanal craftsmanship. The technique also gestures towards Japan’s industrialization in modern times, reflecting a broader cultural exploration of identity by Japanese artists engaging with Western popular culture. In an age increasingly defined by ecological consciousness and posthumanist perspectives, Kato’s work blends mythology with modernity, serving as a compelling reminder of humanity’s deep-rooted ties to its past and its ever-evolving future.
Né en 1969 à Shimane, Japon
Habite et travaille entre Tokyo, Japon et Hong Kong, Chine
Children with disturbing faces, embryos with fully developed limbs, ancestor spirits locked up in bodies with imprecise forms—the creatures summoned by Izumi Kato are as fascinating as they are enigmatic. Their anonymous silhouettes and strange faces, largely absent of features, emphasize simple forms and strong colors; their elementary representation, an oval head with two big, fathomless eyes, depicts no more than a crudely figured nose and mouth. Bringing to mind primitive arts, their expressions evoke totems and the animist belief that a spiritual force runs through living and mineral worlds alike. Embodying a primal, universal form of humanity founded less on reason than on intuition, these magical beings invite viewers to recognize themselves.
Kato graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Musashino University in 1992. Since the 2000s, he has garnered attention as an innovative artist through exhibitions held in Japan and across the world. In 2007, he was invited to take part in the 52nd Venice Biennale International Exhibition, curated by Robert Storr.
À propos de l'artiste
Conceptual artist #37 (he exclusively paints portraits of conceptual artists who have never existed) is the final painting from ‘The Conceptualists’, a major series of works by Hernan Bas featuring imagined protagonists engaged in obsessive pursuits that might be rationalized or even championed when framed as ‘conceptual art.’ The monumental triptych depicts an artist in his studio surrounded by paraphernalia referencing many of the creators and their peculiar practices explored throughout the series. Bas adds a further layer of humor in describing the figure in this work as an artist who ‘exclusively paints portraits of conceptual artists who have never existed.’ Set within Bas’s own studio, it brings the series to a close, acting as an index of sorts and revealing Bas’s own hand in devising his cast of artistic counterparts.
Presented in collaboration with Lehmann Maupin and Victoria Miro.
Né en 1978 à Miami, Florida, USA
Habite et travaille à Miami, Florida, and Detroit, Michigan, USA
Hernan Bas’s expressionist and highly detailed figurative paintings are openly inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as the concurrent symbolist and decorative style of the French group Les Nabis. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the male androgynous dandy, the young protagonists of his oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Whether confined to the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a dense, lush, romantic landscape, they inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Always appearing as if suspended in time, between adolescence and adulthood, they embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo.” With a flamboyant palette and a refined touch, Bas revisits and reinterprets, in masterly fashion, the various categories of classical painting from a homoerotic perspective that is seemingly melancholic yet often humorous and witty.
À propos de l'artiste
Perrotin is also pleased to return to Art Basel (Booth L24 Hall 2.1) with a dynamic presentation that showcases the diversity of the gallery’s program. The booth features eight solo presentations by Nina Chanel Abney, Genesis Belanger, Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung (shown in dialogue), Lynn Chadwick, Izumi Kato, Mr., and Pieter Vermeersch, alongside a selection of new works by artists from the gallery roster. For the second consecutive year, the gallery takes over the booth’s third floor with the solo presentation by Korean artist Lee Bae that includes sculptures and wall works.
