KOICHI SATO: SPECIFICALLY RANDOM
NANZUKA presents Specifically Random, an exhibition of new works by New York-based Japanese artist Koichi Sato at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND. This marks the artist’s first solo presentation in his native Japan.
March 22 – April 28, 2024
Koichi Sato was born in Tokyo in 1974. He moved to New York in 1999, at the age of 25, where he taught himself to paint while working as a corporate graphic designer. It was in the mid-2010s that he commenced his career as an artist, having been discovered by the late Bill Brady (Bill Brady Gallery).
Sato cites old American magazines from the 1970s and 1980s as his preferred image source. From professional wrestlers to baseball players, cheerleaders, bodybuilders, bands, astronauts, and ordinary people, there is no set subject for Sato’s paintings, only choices that arise naturally from his own interests.
Although these unconditionally cheerful characters are at once somewhat nostalgic, they present the impression of being strangely disconnected from specifications such as time, place, race, ideology, and culture. This is indeed significantly related to Sato’s unpretentious, down-to-earth personality, as an artist who expresses a desire to be “more mindlessly absorbed in the act of painting.”
Sato’s work stands in contrast to the kind of highbrow art that requires extensive explanation. There is a reason why his work is loved by so many in a city like New York that constantly finds itself in the midst of rapid change while always demanding competition. For instance, many might notice the symbolic polydactyly of the subjects depicted.
Sato presents a unique explanation for this, mentioning that he simply stops after painting as many fingers he feels necessary, thereby enabling us to imagine the thoughts and intentions that serve to inform this decision. Sato has always stated that he wants people to laugh when they see his work. He dislikes assumptions that people should or must be a certain way, instead actively pursuing humor and the open-mindedness that resides within it.
As a result, the characters Sato depicts, whether they may be famous superstars or unknown neighbors, are ultimately all presented as ‘slightly peculiar people’ that all permeate with the same naivete and cheerfulness.