IZUMI KATO

At Meridiano, Izumi Kato presents a new group of painted sculptures that expand upon the artist’s ongoing exploration of the natural world and the human experience. Kato approaches sculpture, painting, and installation not as fixed categories but as interrelated modes of inquiry. Each work is presented in direct dialogue with its surroundings, activating the unique architecture of Meridiano’s open-air spaces.

The four new works exhibited at Meridiano have developed out of the artist’s numerous visits to the coast of Oaxaca. For Kato this area has been a place of exploration, friendship, respite, and inspiration. Its
location along a narrow strip of desert between the mountains and the sea resonates with the elemental power of his art. 

Throughout the exhibition, Kato employs the geometry of Meridiano in innovative ways. Both vertical and horizontal axes are brought into tension, and works are positioned to engage light, shadow, and
movement over time. Rather than occupying space passively, the works reorient the experience of the architecture. The viewer encounters Kato’s sculptures in succession and is compelled to look closely, to navigate the space attentively, and to register subtle shifts in perception.

In the gallery’s courtyard, Garrido-Lecca presents a freestanding cast-copper sculpture from her Transmutaciones (Transmutations) series (2018–ongoing), inspired by the wooden structures that migrants have used to mark land on the outskirts of Lima since the 1950s. These resemble enlarged poles leaning against one another, rising vertically from the floor. In the coastal desert of Peru, wooden structures are often linked with bamboo panels, gradually growing and assuming more permanent states in brick and concrete. The installation resonates as a human intervention within the minimalist, temple-like structure of Meridiano, generating a palpable anachronism. The oculus in the main space projects sunlight onto the copper weavings, while the poles cast shadows on the surrounding walls, marking the passage of time.

Across Peru, raw copper is extracted and exported before re-imported in its processed form, fueling a transnational economic model detrimental to local communities and the natural landscape. Garrido-Lecca’s work is informed by that of the late Peruvian anthropologist José Matos Mar, whose influential writing in the 1980s outlined the emergence of an informal economy in Lima caused by the political decline of Andean farming communities. According to Matos Mar, modernization in Peru effectively centralized economic and political power in the capital, leading to new migration patterns toward Lima and popular demands for housing, land, and basic services. In Demarcaciones Inversas, Garrido-Lecca transforms an exploited material, copper, into one used for land possession.