Exposition Ai Natori : UNDERCURRENT à la Galerie Sato

Ai Natori's first solo exhibition at Galerie Sato: paintings and, for the first time, ceramics, in which blue, faces and hair become currents, waves and landscapes.

UNDERCURRENT | Ai Natori

For her first solo exhibition at Galerie Sato in Paris, Japanese artist Ai Natori presents UNDERCURRENT, a new body of work shaped by the invisible currents that flow between people. For years, blue has been at the heart of Ai Natori's work. When she speaks about it, she often returns to the ocean: a place where life begins, yet deep enough to lose oneself in. Blue carries both sensations at once, without resolving the contradiction. In her paintings, faces emerge from the blue while hair moves across the canvas like water, becoming in turn waves, rivers or imagined landscapes.

The figures themselves have evolved. Initially imaginary and partly inspired by her younger sister, they have gradually detached themselves from any single person. Through encounters and exchanges with those who look at her work, Ai Natori has come to perceive in these faces something of the viewer, and sometimes something of herself. This movement between the inner world and the outer world lies at the heart of UNDERCURRENT. Like a current running beneath the surface of the water, thoughts and emotions can remain invisible while continuing to travel from one person to another.

The exhibition brings together works from the Blue and Blueness series, along with the darker universe of Night and wonderer. In this more introspective series, Ai Natori imagines thoughts carried by the waves of the internet, drifting through a silent night and crossing the darkness in search of a light.

With UNDERCURRENT, this movement also leaves the surface of the canvas. Ai Natori introduces ceramics into the exhibition for the first time, extending into space figures that until now existed only in painting. Small enough to fit in the hand, the sculptures are arranged in relation to the paintings, following the Japanese idea of shakkei, the "borrowed landscape".