Taro Morimoto at Space Kobo&Tomo

He is showing at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, scheduled for another three weeks, and this week Space Kobo & Tomo in Ginza is also holding a show of his work.

Morimoto’s works are about patterns and colors and their simplification with digital means. He grew up in an area of Japan that specializes in textile production and his works seem to carry that imprint. They are remakes of newspaper, magazine and photo images formed into flat layers of moldable material that overlaps, finished with thin rimmings and painted with a limited pallette of colors. They are less elaborate than Matisse’s fabric-inspired patterns, as shown at the recent show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but they do bring to mind this master’s works.

Among Morimoto’s works, in addition to the flower images, are portraits, which are usually digitized but this time have been weaved. They are easy to miss as they are hidden away in Space Kobo & Tomo’s small office, but they show an interesting detour in the artist’s work.