Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Masakatsu Kondo

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Masakatsu Kondo

by John McGee

Masakatsu Kondo, Woodland (Orange Green), acrylic on canvas, 145X145cm, 2001 
(Images courtesy Taro Nasu Gallery)

Masakatsu Kondo is a painting machine. Not because of his output, but because of his technique. He uses graphic design tools and printing methods to produce vivid, hyperreal landscapes, as seen in last year’s “Prime: Reflection of Form and Color” exhibition at Tokyo Opera City, and up now at Taro Nasu Gallery in Saga.

Murmurs of 19th-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich seem to drift through a snowy, dusky, purple-blue birch forest. But the flat, impassive surface quickly squelches any melancholic pining. Similarly, a high contrast, orange-green desert under an incredibly cerulean sky burns like an alcohol fire—showy but not hot.

The method that produces such cold brilliance is hard and technical. Kondo’s “one day, one color” painting process is customized paint-by-numbers, not subjective noodling. In a laborious, hand-made simulation of silk-screen printing, he selects a limited color palette based on Photoshop experiments, projects the images onto canvas, traces them and then applies squiggles of flat acrylic paint, light to dark, one tonal layer at a time. Up close, the meticulous, repetitive process produces a mottled surface where form is atomized into color, where the expressive energy of van Gogh merges with the rigid control of Seurat’s pointillism. Stepping back though, the Technicolor camouflage snaps into recognizable photorealistic shapes. 

Kondo works from found images, preferring geological survey magazines because the matter-of-fact, scientific illustrations of fault lines and other principles restrict romantic, touristic readings. While the artist admits that landscape for him is natsukashii (nostalgic)—he grew up in the countryside outside Nagoya—he is quick to point out that his paintings are abstractions, not depictions of actual places. “I like ‘mountains,’” he says, “rather than ‘Rocky Mountains.’” 

Kondo contends that, while mediated images define the territory of the postmodern planet, these TV locations aren’t real places, only phantasms, representations of travel desires, backdrops to movies. His large canvases—often around two meters on a side—also manipulate expectations and desires. The postcard views promise, then deny the simple pleasure of grand vistas. They are attractive, but too extreme to be comforting, not exotic, just alien. 

Masakatsu Kondo, Woods in the Snow, acrylic on canvas, 145X145cm, 2001

Kondo says he is testing the limits of believability. His color is becoming increasingly artificial and chemical. And he sometimes changes the physical properties of the landforms, stretching the top of one peak, cropping another. Just like in the “real” world, National Geographic is annexed by Walt Disney. In this latest work though, landscape seems less a conceptual imperative than a device for exploring his complex, stunning world of color. The harsh glare of pigment, not sunlight, illuminates his trees and glades in these paintings. A forest erupts from just three hues—yellow, orange and green—in several steps of light and dark tones. Kondo’s technique may be mechanical, but the effects are homegrown. 

Kondo lives and works in London. 

This exhibition was held in Sep 2001 at Taro Nasu Gallery, Saga-cho, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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