Bio
Born in Osaka, Japan, Kouta Sasai was raised in the mainland town of Nara. He learned his craft under the tutelage of the artist/teacher Hiroshi Noda, and took some of his early Western inspiration from the works of Anselm Keifer and Andrew Wyeth. Sasai currently works in the still atmosphere of a traditional wooden Japanese home and studio on the island of Miyajima, near Hiroshima.
Statement
‘What is real? What is real for me? What is right for me?’ I am constantly thinking about these questions as I paint.
Everything I have painted is somehow wrong. There is something right, but in a different place. Through my own actions, I am trying to uncover what is right. Therefore, the painting is completely wrong. The content of the painting is completely wrong. But what I see is, somehow, still the ‘right thing.’
And this ‘seeing’ the ‘right thing’ is ‘art.’ In other words, to keep seeing beauty to the end. I think this attitude leads to realism. That is why it is important that none of what you do is correct. If you find correctness in what you have done, it becomes a virtual reality.
Reality, realness, and actuality must still be found in suffering. This has been proven in Western culture and must have been a solid foundation. In this day and age, people are forgetting this. But this is the only way to reach the human heart. Only that touch, the substance of the paint itself, can reach the human heart. The brilliance of the matter, the brilliance of the paint, and the brilliance of the layers of paint come from such an inner nature. It is not because painters have a good technique or a good sense of layering. If there are 100 people, there are 100 different ways of painting, 100 different ways of layering, different methodologies. And each one is the best. Each of them is the best, and the brightness shines out from the best, pushing up the substance of the work. This is what makes painting so interesting.”
