Masamitsu Shigeta
One day trip
June 1 - September 23, 2023
Gaa Projects Cologne
Structured within the 24-hour cycle of a day, One Day Trip presents a pictorial journey through a New York City commute, each painting documenting a specific time of day- morning, daytime, evening, and night. Through the careful rendering of space, Shigeta’s anti-pastoral landscapes convey the subtle shifts of color, light, and geometry to invoke a sense of time, place, and circumstance.
One Day Trip navigates urban spaces, buildings, waterways, streets, and crowds of people moving throughout their day. Through gestural brush strokes and vivid colors, the mundane is transformed into something joyous, intimate, and profound. Often characterized by a still quality, Shigeta’s cityscapes possess a harmony of both quietness and bustle, nature and architecture.
Inspired by the Belgian painter Jean Brusselmans Shigeta references his unexpected confluence of nature and architecture. Like Brusselmans, Shigeta juxtaposes the strictness and linearity of urban spaces and the more flexible and layered forms of nature. In One Day Trip, Shigeta also looks to the work of Vincent Van Gogh. Interested in Van Gogh’s use of color and application, Shigeta’s work achieves the likeness of a place but also, perhaps, more importantly, the feeling of place.
Materially, the paintings in One Day Trip are comprised of oil on canvas enclosed in artist-made frames. Formally and materially referencing the painted image they enclose, the frames become both a device for enclosure and an extension of the painted form. Made from materials in and around the city and his studio, the frames become a mirror of the image and place. The painting becomes an object. The image spills over and around the edges and out into space. In this, Shigeta’s work becomes almost like a sculpture or installation, creating an architecture that extends into the space of the present while the image clearly depicts a particular moment of time and place.
This toggling between past and present is intentional, and the overall arc of his work is subtly site-specific. Shigeta’s process is one of careful observation. The work begins with walking. On these walks, Shigeta documents the spaces he encounters through photographs that are then brought back into the studio. He paints every place he visits. His work traces his life, travels, and movement through the day- a document of his time and space while also reflecting something universal.
Masamitsu Shigeta (b. 1992, Tokyo, Japan) lives and works in Hoboken, NJ. He holds an MFA from New York University and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts. Shigeta has held solo exhibitions with SITUATIONS, NY, Chinatown Soup, NY, and Tyler Park Presents, LA. He has been in group exhibitions at The Landing, LA; John C. Hutcheson Gallery, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN; PLATFORM, David Zwirner; Online Viewing Room, The Hole, NY, 80WSE, NYC; and Cob Gallery, London. His work has been reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail. His work is in prominent collections, including The Dallas Museum of Art.