GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku is pleased to present Tokuro Sakamoto's solo exhibition "dilly-dally" from November 25 (Sat) to December 23 (Sat).

Tokuro Sakamoto was born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1975 and graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1999 with a major in Japanese painting. However, he chose acrylic paint as a more suitable medium for painting contemporary Japanese motifs rather than highly textured mineral pigments on hemp paper and has since developed his own unique world of painting, which he has exhibited in numerous solo shows.

Since his early career, Sakamoto has looked at natural landscapes and man-made structures he sees in his daily life with an equivalent eye, finding beauty in their repeated rhythms, repetitions, overlaps, and hollows, extracting the necessary elements, and reconstructing them in a simple manner. The motifs that emerge in his works are highly abstract, even though they are representational paintings, and they are designed to intersect with the landscape in the viewer's memory, giving a sense of déjà vu.

Although the works may appear to be flat and designed, they give life to the motifs by making the viewer feel the temperature and sound of the landscape, and the artist's solid technical skills bring fresh surprises to our eyes by cutting out common scenes and motifs like abstract paintings, and expand our imagination to see the essence and beauty of things, or something else.

“Michikusa(道草)” is the original title of this exhibition and has two meanings: to loiter on the way and the grass on the wayside, but Sakamoto employed "dilly-dally" to express both images. In the works that are mainly silhouettes of weeds growing on the roadside and landscapes, he focuses on the beauty and depth that the artist himself often misses in his daily life.

Viewers will be drawn in by the familiar playground equipment, Sakamoto's unique way of cropping the landscape, and the mysterious depiction of depth that seems to exist within the flat picture plane. We hope you will visit the exhibition, even though the weather is getting colder by the day.

Artist's Comment

For this exhibition, I described some roadside weeds because I found the silhouettes of weeds beautiful when I was on the road.

Daily observations and discoveries make up my work.

My works are born from my daily life, and I depict things that are everywhere, things that exist in nature, and interesting man-made formations.

I want to honestly express my current point of view and interests.

When I am aware of my point of view, I find all things in nature interesting.

Tokuro Sakamoto, 2023