Mitsunori Kimura – Smell –

KENJI TAKI GALLERY

Mitsunori Kimura
Smell
Jul. 5 – Aug. 7, 2024
Tokyo

Mitsunori Kimura – Smell

In 2022, around the time when people began gradually removing their masks, he notes that he started becoming highly aware of scents.

The smell of coffee from the mouth of someone walking behind him at the supermarket, or the scent of figs while out for a stroll. For this exhibition, he attempts to create an installation where “just as fruits use animals to disperse their seeds, the scents themselves are carried and dispersed by the audience.”

“In the works that take the form of fruit, a human-like pulp respires within, releasing a scent from its mouth. In the pieces depicting humans, I want to evoke a human presence through the smell of coffee; similarly, for the other animal works, I want to conjure the presence of a koala through eucalyptus, or a bat through banana. Not the scent of something being eaten on the spot, but the lingering odor of something consumed somewhere else.”

Smell of Melon, 2024
Japanese cypress, acrylic
47.9 x 37 x 2.5 cm

Mitsunori Kimura

He creates sculptures using oil paint and woodcarving, with animals and humans as his central motifs. In his series of panels—which the artist calls “hair-growing panels”—he uses a chainsaw to shave the surface of wooden panels engineered specifically to fray, expressing the fur and hair of animals and humans. He attempts to elicit the state of “growing hair,” which can be seen as a humble testament to life, not just from the motifs themselves but from the very essence of the material.

Smell of Coffee (Human), 2024
Camphor wood, epoxy putty, and coffee
90.5 x 24 x 20 cm