OPENING | Pareidolia

Painting mainly abstract artworks over the last 20 years and having worked in galleries the last 15 years are the experiences that have inspired Katsumi Kimoto to produce his current body of work. “I’ve been watching people view abstract works my whole career and it’s always interesting to see how people react and what they see for themselves. It’s for this reason that I’ve painted this series, titled Pareidolia”, says Kimoto, now 40.

Pareidolia is our mind’s tendency and ability to see things, within a minimal amount of stimuli, such as faces, animals or objects. For example, it’s the same phenomenon that allows us to see things in cloud formations. Pareidolia is also famous in psychology due to the Rorschach ink-blot test, whereby the test subject are asked to share what images they perceive in random patterns, to interpret their mental state.

It’s a freeing process for Kimoto, “I no longer have to abstract a thing and represent that thing in a meaningful way to me, instead I can create the abstract image to speak for itself and to be interpeted by the viewer, and let it go. Which, is essentially what you do when you release an abstract piece, as many people interpret it however they choose to, except now the main difference is that I’m painting works for that purpose.”

Naturally, I must still sign off on the artwork as being complete and meeting my own artistic expectations. And with each artwork in the series, they receive a similar title, Pareidolia, plus the month/year/order they were produced, no other title will be publicly labelled. However, Kimoto says he may reveal to the collector what he would have titled the piece on the back of the artwork.