Katano has lived for many years in London and Poland. Viewers who see his paintings may feel that they are so-called 'Expressionist' paintings. But is that really so? 'I have always been more interested in how to paint than in what to paint. It feels as if my brain follows my reflexes. I think that is the only way not to lose to "painting".' '2010 is an attempt to reject the ideas of contemporary art and of the art-like, and the setting-up of concepts, to pursue only the appeal of painting, and in doing so to become what Japanese art truly is. I don't think about anything, so isn't being thoroughly painting-oriented in content exactly what now, the contemporary, is?' Man Katano. 'My work is different from so-called painting and from historical context,' Katano declares. It certainly is different. But where does it differ? Katano also says, 'Something whose skill is immature must not be taken as contemporary painting.' But this 'skill' is a tricky thing. 'Reflexes', 'skill': there, although Katano does not say much, his extension suddenly shows its face. The 'skill' of fitting an enormous amount of information onto a single picture plane with the greatest of ease is in a sense violent, and at the same time extremely intellectual. Katano, who has also thought about the relationship between the world seen from Japan and Japan seen from the world, in fact also keeps his distance from the recent Japonisme that, under the name of contemporary art, runs counter to the values and sensibility of pre-modern Japanese art and craft. Katano thinks that such things, on the contrary, evoke a modern Japanese sense of pathos, and are to be loathed simply because they are political. Katano's antithesis to the context of so-called West-centered contemporary art, which stands at the opposite pole to the Japanese, can be called a 'skill' different from cheap Japonisme. The skill Katano shows is a means of standing up to the overwhelming thing outside called 'painting'. It lies somewhere 'far away' inside Katano, different from a concept: a 'skill' that can only be called reflexes that now do not go through the brain. It is something he acquired naturally during his long life abroad. What is the enormous imagery overflowing in Katano's paintings? It can be said to be the complete depiction of all the seeds of the theme entrusted to a single painting, that is, of its extension. In that sense, Katano's paintings are paintings not of expression but of extension. He is an artist who aims at how to paint, not what, and who paints not expressionistically but extensionally, with enormous intellectual power. And his paintings go on expanding. An artist rare in Japan, who has at last made Japan his home for three and a half years: before he goes off again to some country in Europe, so that he does not go...., please come and see Man Katano's solo exhibition.