FRAMED Berlin had the pleasure of showing your work a few years ago. Back then, your paintings were thicker in material, contained more concrete forms, and gestures closer to drawing. Your current work engages with space quite differently. Can you tell us a bit about the evolution of your paintings over the past few years?

Katsuhiko: Painting is both a physical and a spiritual act for me. In that sense, my paintings reflect my relationship with the world. Around the time of my 2021 exhibition, I felt very isolated. Living in Germany as a foreigner, I was desperately trying to protect myself, and I think that sense of tension appeared in the work. Since then, I have rediscovered my own background in Japan and have become more open and generous toward myself and the world. I believe this shift is visible in the paintings.

Looking at your paintings, one is tempted to come up with a story or a scene; there’s an urge to apply meaning to forms, gestures, and colors. How do you relate to that urge? What drives you while painting, and what is the relationship between image, impulse, and vision?

Katsuhiko: I want my paintings to offer a space for interpretation — something like the sign of something about to emerge. I am interested in creating a sensation where forms or images almost appear and then dissolve again. Colors, textures, and shapes intertwine organically, forming a structure that is constantly in motion — almost like an ecosystem. This doesn’t come from a concrete image; it comes from the dynamism of the elements that make up the painting. Still, I don’t intend to make purely abstract paintings. Without a larger structure or vessel, the elements would fall apart. So I always pay attention to symbolic compositions or shapes. Much of this comes from my inspiration from nature — mountains, forests, ponds.

As a point of reference, the very late water scenes of Monet come to mind: a dissolving, fluid space, with nothing to hold on to but reflections and glittering light. You seem connected to these ideas of impulse and movement, even to the palette of the Impressionists. At the time, the Impressionists were extremely curious and inspired by Japanese art. As someone coming from Japan, how do you see this relationship?

Katsuhiko: My recent works from the last two or three years have been strongly inspired by Monet. I even visited his house and garden. I am fascinated by the history of cross-cultural exchange. Until the mid-1800s, Japan practiced isolationism, which limited contact with the outside world and allowed its own visual language to develop independently. After opening the country in 1854, Western culture poured in, and rapid modernization began — often at the cost of traditional forms.

In painting, for example, linear perspective and Western realism did not originally exist in Japan. Traditional forms such as ukiyo-e or landscape painting depict the world in a highly subjective and abstract way. When ukiyo-e arrived in Paris, it inspired Monet, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Gauguin, and many others — the history we know as Japonisme. Monet’s late Water Lilies, in particular, approach near abstraction. Through his work, I sense a worldview and an attentiveness to nature that deeply resonates with me: the idea that the individual cannot be separated from the world, but is part of it, dissolved within it. This is connected to an animistic sensibility deeply rooted in Japanese culture. In Western modern painting, I can see echoes of these Japanese worldviews, perspectives, and spiritualities — and as a contemporary Japanese artist, I want to expand and reinterpret them further.

Finally, something about your process: when you approach a new painting, what starts you off? Is there a concrete vision, a memory, or a certain light situation or texture that drives you? Do you make notes or prepare before working on larger formats, or does the process unfold itself through painting? And how do you know when a painting is done?

Katsuhiko: Sometimes I start with an image, and sometimes with nothing at all. Even when I do have a vision, it often changes throughout the process and becomes something unexpected. A surprising color or texture can trigger a shift that changes the entire direction of the painting. It’s difficult to describe what “completion” means, but perhaps it is the moment when any sense of discomfort disappears. What matters is whether the work feels natural — as something that exists in this world. The way I determine this is entirely physical and based on experience accumulated over time.

By Ofir Dor 

Photos by Johanna Maria Dietz and Sascha Bystrova