How many people from your life can you remember? Just to write them all down would be a monumental task, but to paint them all would be something else entirely. Los Angeles artist Rob Sato has taken that challenge on in his Five Movements for Little Guys series – although the figures are represented in miniature, the five canvases are themselves 10 feet high, making it a very substantial feat of memory and artistry. His remembered figures parade through the colourful fantasy landscapes – time, movement and memory are three of Sato’s favourite themes.
Five Movements is one of the works in Sato’s Curses exhibition, currently showing at Martha Otero Gallery. A series of free-standing watercolours entitled Seances call to mind scenes of pagan ritual; set in a forest, an odd assortment of characters assemble, perhaps to cast spells or summon curses. Sato goes even more sculptural with his Artifacts collection, which features baseballs as the medium. The artist began his practice of doodling on the balls to fill time while he warmed the bench during school baseball games, later rediscovering them in his parents’ garage and recommencing his drawing. In The Battle of Book 52, Sato imagines a battlefield charge taking place through the pages of a sketchbook, with fighting continuing to the last page as a metaphor for his need to fill every page of a book he starts drawing in. The Los Angeles gallery is hosting the show until 25 October.
