Exhibition Information

Midori Sato Royal Blue Closet
2016 acrylic and oil on canvas 218x291cm
(Source = Gana Art)

Midori Sato Pink Roses and Clouds Closet
2023 acrylic and oil on canvas 162x227.3cm
(Source = Gana Art)

Midori Sato Margaret Field Closet
2023 acrylic and oil on canvas 112x162 cm
(Source = Gana Art)

Exhibition view

(Source = Gana Art)

			Gana Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Midori Sato (b.1984), whose work utilizes a lavish closet to embody the human desire for beauty and possessions. She has been working on the theme since 2008, and has recently added a new twist to her work by incorporating natural motifs such as flowers, gardens, and the sky.

Midori, who has expressed a keen interest in clothes since childhood, fell in love with the window displays of boutiques she encountered in Paris as an exchange student. These well-appointed show windows struck a stark contrast with the tiny closet in her dorm room. In this light, the artist decided to paint a fictional wardrobe outside the bounds of reality to fulfill her aspirations. She blurred the boundaries between reality and fantasy by utilizing huge canvases reminiscent of actual wardrobes while depicting dresses in bold, rapid brushstrokes to create images that border on abstraction. Stripped of details, the dresses remain only as outlines or are rendered at simple color planes, reflecting the artist’s intention to capture not simply a wardrobe, but also her inner self and women’s longing for glamor. Furthermore, the backgrounds of colored planes rendered in coarse brushstrokes display traces of the artist’s movements. This provides an additional formative element for the work, together with the dresses depicted in lines. By dissolving the distinction between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, and abstraction and figuration, Midori Sato does not aim to represent a formalized wardrobe per se, but an informal wardrobe that is constantly changing according to the viewer.

Midori has recently embraced flowers as a new subject matter. the artist has sought to capture on canvas the formative aesthetics of flowers themselves along with their vitality and has expanded her interest in flowers to incorporate nature into her wardrobes. By exploring flowers, she discovered the beauty of nature in its constant transformation and viewed these free and unpredictable changes as overlapping and creating a unified flow. The artist connected this flow of change to her own practice, which is how the exhibition earned its title Flow. The artist has metaphorically revealed her own psychological attitude towards beauty through her depictions of wardrobes, and subsequently expressed wardrobes incorporating natural landscapes by expanding her themes into flowers and nature as a means to embody her psychological transformation. The exhibition offers an opportunity to appreciate Midori Sato’s inner transformation and the developmental flow of her work, as well as providing a meaningful glimpse into the beautiful wardrobe that she has been exploring for fifteen years.

(Source = Gana Art)