Kawata Satoshi’s artistic practice involves the use of traditional fresco techniques to explore the elements specific to a locale against a backdrop of homogenized urban and suburban landscapes.

To create the new works for this exhibition, Kawata conducted research on the civil engineering technology that shapes the suburban landscape. Road building and other land redevelopment projects produce artificially sloped surfaces that are protected by concrete structures, resulting in a highly distinctive topography across Japan, particularly since the postwar period. The tall transmission towers that first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and contributed to the development of urban economies and industry possess functional, geometrical structures that abruptly dot various landscapes from mountain forests to residential areas. Suburbs are the outlying districts of a city formed from the symbiosis or conflict between the anonymous humanmade and the natural, and have become an archetypical landscape of contemporary Japan diametrically opposed to famous tourist attractions, and yet nonetheless a vista that anyone can immediately conjure up in their mind.

This exhibition explores such images of suburbia through chromatically varied forms across the above-ground and basement spaces of the entire venue. Above ground, the three glass walls are covered by a mural painting transferred to fabric using the strappo technique. The exhibit is viewable from both sides of the glass.

The works in the gallery use the same sketches as the above-ground piece but are rendered in different colors and on plaster. The duplication of the imagery evokes the classic look of suburbia, its roads lined with chain shops and greenery. The images of slopes and transmission towers are detached from the landscape, fragmented, and then reconfigured into an immersive installation.

The exhibition title references public works, a category of public-facing infrastructure in which a government body finances a project for the greater community. Just as civil engineering literally means engineering for ordinary citizens, the title signals the publicness encompassed in such construction projects. Similarly, a mural is often installed in a public space and available for anyone to view, and secures the contexts of the site in which it is installed. As a medium, the mural is a public, truly civil art form.

At the end of the exhibition, the murals in the basement will be removed using the strappo technique. When a landscape created through civil engineering is rendered as civil art, what appears is a whole new landscape in which our voices and memories reside.

A fresco is a type of mural painting created using dry-powder pigment on a fresh plaster wall. Strappo is a means of detaching a fresco from a wall and transferring it to another support by gluing a canvas to the wall and peeling off the top layer. The technique is mainly used in art conservation and restoration.

The Triangle
The Triangle is a space newly created for the reopening of the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art. It aims to nurture emerging artists, especially those associated with Kyoto, and to provide opportunities for museum visitors to experience contemporary art. In order to connect the artist, museum, and viewer in a triangle and deepen those connections, the space hosts an eponymous series of special exhibitions and presents new artistic expressions from Kyoto.