Kazuo Katase

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Kazuo Katase ( Japanese片 瀬 和 夫Katase Kazuo ; * 1947 in Shizuoka ) is a Japanese artist . He works with a wide variety of media, such as painting , sculpture or photography . However, his works are mainly related to space and thus primarily represent environments and room installations . He is part of conceptual art . Katase has lived in Kassel since 1975 .

Career

Kazuo Katase was born in Shizuoka in 1947 and began working conceptually in Japan at a young age. Nevertheless, he describes himself as a "late developer". At the suggestion of Klaus Hoffmann, he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1975 and studied in Floris M. Neusüss ' photography class at the University of Kassel , where, however, he specifically developed the "autodidactic attitude" against the European-influenced academicism.

Concept art and Buddhism

In the late 1970s and early 1980s he came to the end of his personal artistic development in conceptual art. However, this art direction should not prove to be checked off for him. "Concept," said Katase, "means spiritual art, and it cannot end as a tendency." This is how he dealt with religions, especially Zen Buddhism . Katase, although Asian, went the same way as Arthur Schopenhauer , Rudolf Steiner or Hermann Hesse , who all sought the truth of the western world in the Far East.

“I'm going over a bridge and I'm done in yellow. It is the way from Asia to Europe. Then I put my makeup on white again. Yellow and white, that was the argument: Who am I? In Japan they always said you are so European, here they say: you are so Japanese. I am yellow I am white. «This statement by Katase refers to an action from 1978, when he had already been living in the Federal Republic of Germany for three years and attracted attention primarily with his“ computer strips ”. These were artistic variations of the EAN codes, which nowadays are hardly considered part of the everyday world. Katase's search for identity between Asia and Europe culminated in a kind of ›technical self-portrait‹ by coding the letter-number combination of his Japanese passport. But in contrast to the electronically readable computer characters, which, in order to be deciphered, always have to be identical and therefore technically perfect, Katase painted them on fabric. One possible interpretation would be that he wanted to imply that he had created an independent work, the meaning of which is not clearly defined.

At least some of Katase's works from this period deal with the dangers of the advancing mechanization of society, such as ›The Photographic Eye Intervention‹ from 1978. But the Euro-Asian in spirit countered these fears mainly with the help of concrete poetry which he seems to understand in the sense of a non-binding game of various, unusual techniques. For example, he associates the chopsticks of his homeland with the bars of the EAN codes.

In 1983, Hans Gehrcke pointed out that in many parts of his work Katase alludes explicitly to his Japanese origins, that it is a decisive part of his identity and thus also the subject of artistic discussion.

One of his works is the "River Guard" created in Lünen an der Lippe in 2008.

Exhibitions

Ring of Being

Ring des Seyns at the Ludwigshafen Clinic

In 1998 Katase designed the " Ring des Seyns " for the Ludwigshafen Clinic . The Ypsilon in the name of this work of art alludes to humanism, in which this letter was often used, e.g. B. on behalf of the State of Bavaria .

  • " Ring of Being "

  • Ludwigshafen Friesenheim Klinikum Ring des Seyns2.jpg
  • Ludwigshafen Friesenheim Klinikum Ring des Seyns3.jpg
  • Ludwigshafen Friesenheim Klinikum Ring des Seyns4.jpg

Description of the "Ring of Being"

» At the outer end of the elongated building wing, where two streets cross, is the Ring des Seyns, a four-part installation made up of simple basic elements. […] On the roof there is a 30 meter long black rod that is guided over a green patinated, tubular element as a support, so that a slope is created. At the outer end of the bar, in front of the front wall of the building, there is a red ring with a diameter of 10 meters that appears to float in front of the building. While these three elements are directly related to the architecture, a 26-meter-high, slightly inclined, brownish oxidized rod made of Corten steel rises in front of the glass facade as the fourth component of the installation. [...] The ring in the outside area also corresponds to another ring inside the building - in the form of a blue neon ring in the glass stairwell dome of the hospital. «
from Herbert Köhler about Kazuo Katase (Ring des Seyns)

Honors

Works in museums

swell

  • Detlef Bluemler: In the no man's land between yellow and white . In: artist. Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Art , edition 20/1992.

literature

  • KK in conversation with Volker Rattemeyer, in: Kat . Heidelberger Kunstverein 1983, no p.
  • Helmut Friedel: Fish + Ship - Empty + More . In: Cat. Signing . City Gal. in the Lenbachhaus, Kunstforum Maximilianstraße 1985, no p.
  • Klaus Hoffmann: Not this, not that, but ... The yes in the no. In the no the yes. In: fork . Exhibition cat. Kunstverein Wolfsburg 1988, no p.
  • Heinz Liesbrock: The obvious secret . In: Cat. Temple de la nuit . Center National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble 1989, no p.
  • KK in conversation with Kersti Schwarze, in: Kassel Kulturell No. 4 . April 1992, p. 25
  • Sculpture in Freiburg, Volume 1 - Art of the 20th Century in Public Spaces , Ed .: Michael Klant, modo Verlag, Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1998, pages 179-182, ISBN 978-3-922675-76-1
  • Herbert Köhler: It cuts into a piece of nature . In: artist. Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Art, issue 56/2001 .

Web links

Commons : Kazuo Katase  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ No picture without light in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on July 14, 2013, page R5.
  2. ↑ Herbert Köhler on Kazuo Katase (Ring des Seyns)
personal data
SURNAME Katase, Kazuo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Shizuoka