Thursday, January 19, 2023

Satoru Kurata at Tomio Koyama Gallery

(link)

Most of today's wild wacky arm figuration is limbs as an excuse for some Pollock. An abstraction excused as the narrative it isn't. (Like we still haven't gotten past Schutz. Or Beckman.) But here the narrative structure is stupid simple, effective. The trick gives subjects autonomy, the minorest amount of agency. We see them seeing. Instead of just the painter. Which we still always are. But we get to forget that for a brief edenic moment. Momentarily vicarious.