Satoshi Hirose

Satoshi Hirose (1963-) lives and works in Milan. Actively producing works since the 1990s when he commenced his artistic practice, he has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally, including those in museums and galleries across Japan, Asia, and Italy. In recent years he has also been involved in long-term projects that extend beyond existing art activities and consider interactions with society, such as his Sky Project (initiated in Maebashi in 2016, and anticipated to continue until 2035), in which he exchanges photographs of the sky with mothers and children of a single mother’s living support facility.

The concept of Hirose’s work, on a macro perspective, extends to encompass the entire earth, countries, seasons, and even to the universe. At the same time, Hirose discovers richness and diversity in the context of everyday Italian cuisine, while unearthing a common sense of happiness and meaning for life through the encounters and dialogues experienced over the course of his intercultural journeys. A major characteristic of Hirose’s work is to transfer such everydayness to an artistic level, while serving to present a strong influence on the viewer’s five senses.

While Hirose creates installations in which he covers entire floors with lemons or various spices to stimulate viewers’ sense of sight, smell, and taste, he is also known for his series of photographs that capture the sky, as well as his Blue Drawings that appear as if depicting an infinite proliferation of cells. In his Beans Cosmos series, various foodstuffs like beans and pasta, maps rolled up into balls, glass marbles, and flecks of gold are seen suspended in acrylic resin.

Hirose came to discover how richly complex worlds that often remain overlooked, in fact reside in the realms that exist between distinguished entities such as artificial and natural, day and night, as well as in the small things and those in the peripheries, thus serving to capture the profound contradictions and uncertainties that are indeed not apparent on the surface. Viewers are invited to experience the world of Hirose’s works from various viewpoints and angles while strolling through the exhibition space. The coexistence of heterogeneous objects, whose appearances change greatly through changing the perspective from which they are observed, indeed appears reminiscent of our society itself.

Art critic Noi Sawaragi critiques Hirose’s works as follows:
“ ‘Journey’ in this sense does not simply signify the physical travel or migration of the body, but also reflects the rearranging of the body scheme surrounding the senses. A variety of ‘smells’ have been employed in Hirose’s past projects as well, and they all indeed harbor the aspect of embarking on a journey around the five senses.” （１）

【The Message of Hirose’s Work 】
- Everything is in the midst of a journey -

Art critic Dario Salani, describes Hirose’s works as follows:
“ (Hirose’s works) come up against various problems, propose inquisitions, doubts, and never give way to absolute truths. All are found in a geographical crossroads. A meditative journey from the real to the metaphysical; spiritual but also rationally present at the same time.” （２）

Fumihiko Sumitomo, Director of Arts Maebashi and Associate Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Global Arts, Department of Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices, critiques Hirose’s perspective as he writes:
“Hirose’s unfettered and resilient criticality of questioning what appears on the surface relativizes even the idea of putting humans at the center of the world. He leads us to a world in which humans and other living beings, adults and children, inorganic and organic and the like, are devoid of hierarchy and autonomy, and instead connect with one another through “mysteries” that are not apparent on the surface.” （３）

What could be described as being at the core of Hirose’s work is the uncertainty and ambiguity of all things. He enables viewers to experience through their senses, the shift in standards and the fragility of reality when familiar everyday things are transposed to another context. In doing so, he communicates to us that what exists in the world does not remain immutable in visible form, but instead will always continue to be in constant flux, further suggesting how they present scope for infinite possibilities through both our experiences and imagination.

The message that Hirose’s works communicate, perhaps present us with an important sense of awareness in our present times when the entire world faces an unpredictable future with conventional values crumbling to dust, as it finds itself engaging in a battle with an invisible enemy.

(1)Noi Sawaragi “Project A.P.O” Exhibition at Sagacho Exhibit Space,Tokyo, 1999
(2)Dario Salani “TRA-MITE” Exhibition at Hyperion Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 1998
(3)Fumihiko Sumitomo “Migration and Continuity -Satoshi Hirose’s Resilient Throughs For Coexistence”, ‘Hirose Satoshi’, truering, 2020

Artist Profile
Satoshi Hirose

Satoshi Hirose was born in 1963 in Tokyo. He graduated from Tama Art University in 1989 and two years later he received an Italian government scholarship and moved to Italy. In 1996-97, he stayed in Italy under POLA Art Foundation Grants Program. He then completed a degree at Milan’s Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1997, and studied in New York under Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists provided by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2008-09. He is currently based in Milan.
His major solo exhibitions include “Lemon Project 03” (The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, 1997), “Paradiso- Criterium 34” (Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, Japan, 1998), “2001” (Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2000), and in more recent years “Heteronym” (Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Napoli, 2015), and “Vis à Vis Flâneur – SATOSHI HIROSE” (Fondazione Molise Cultura, Campobasso, Italy, 2016).

He has presented work in numerous group exhibitions including “Neo Tokyo” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2001), and “Beppu Contemporary Art Festival 2012: Mixed Bathing World” (Beppu City, Oita, Japan, 2012), as well as a commission “Your Sky, My Sky: sky project for Arts Maebashi” Arts Maebashi, Gunma, Japan (2013). He has held five solo exhibitions at Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2000, 2005, 2008, 2009, ad 2013. Hirose also has worked on commissions in collaboration with companies. In 2020, he is creating an artwork in the new building of PeptiDream, a pharmaceutical company that pursues drug development.

(M.O)

＊Excerpt from the press release of the solo exhibition “Strange Loop” held at Tomio Koyama Gallery in July 2020