Ryo Kato
»Ein Wolf im Schafspelz«

The exhibition ends on 19 August 2023.

Kato’s paintings design figures for a fragile-systematic thinking, for a crisis consciousness in the face of the prevailing illusion of the ultimate breakthrough of reason. The catastrophes we are all familiar with become content, form and formativity here. In his painting, Ryo Kato collects the material of the world, of this – with Kleist – so fragile institution, and fills it in the active process of understanding and transformation. His own experiences are brought into each production. The painterly transformations do not arise from cool contemplation or vivisection, rather they are risky commitment, collective participation, vouching response. Nor are the pictorial actors simply placed in the work as the sole cause of the horrors they inflict. Rather, these figures are constructed through successive determinations, from the interweaving of different social, cultural and political ingredients. This corresponds to the simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal structure of the images: The protagonist is signified in a peculiar simultaneity both from the edge of the picture and, conversely, the wild lineaments, the streams of colour in turn emanate from him. Cause and result are indissolubly intertwined.~Dorothée Bauerle-Willert

We look forward to your visit.