The Merry Karnowsky galley opened two terrific shows this past month, exhibiting the creatures of Jeff Soto’s mythological “Nightgardens” and the wonderfully surreal visions of technology and fairy tales in Masakatsu Sashie’s “Blind Box.”
Soto’s riveting pieces explore a unique, original mythology. The show’s self-titled piece, “Nightgardens” serves as a focal point for the entire exhibit. The intense aqua eyes of the beautiful, strange creature Soto depicts appears to be watching over the other creatures throughout the exhibit. Soto notes “It was one of the last pieces I did. The images in it sum up the whole show. I’m spiritual person, not a religious person, and I’m trying to find the meaning in my world. All of these paintings are all me being spiritual.” Soto explains that he wanted to create a mythology similar to that in the Greek myths he loved as a child. “There’s a part of me that would like Zeus to exist. I’m trying to paint mysteries, spiritual mysteries, and create a series that’s both colorful and strong.” Soto’s last LA exhibit was nine years ago, as his recent focus has been on shows in New York and abroad. “I wanted to come back with an interesting show, a renewal. Whenever I put a show together, it’s a continued body of work focused in one area. In this case, it was what was going on in my mind with these spiritual stories.”
Sashie’s “Blind Box” is similarly a complete and connected series of paintings. Speaking through a translater, Sashie explained that his work here, which features mysterious globes as a part of their detailed landscapes has meanings that depend upon the viewer’s perceptions. They can be viewed, he says, either symbolically, or literally. “In my piece ‘The Identity of the Sun,’ the glowing globe is expressing the image of a nuclear power plant. The idea is that the sun, like nuclear energy by-products and waste, itself lasts forever. It’s based around the idea of the failure of the Japanese nuclear power plant, the fact that it is a kind of false sun.” Another painting, “Jankalin” is based on a Japanese version of The Nutcracker story, in which a character named Jankalin turns a child in to a mouse. In Sashie’s stunningly dimensional painting, a large globe containing games and media images hovers over a small mouse poised on the ground beneath it, serving as both a creature created by the globe’s power and subsumed by it.
Both artists reveal magic, whimsy, and vibrant uses of color on their canvases, as they draw viewers into mesmerizing worlds that don’t really exist – and yet we believe, in seeing them, that they could.
All Photos by Jack Burke
