photo courtesy by Asian Improv aRts Midwest
Hiroshi Mehata/ Mehata Sentimental Legend
Hiroshi Mehata is Visual /Sound artist in Tokyo Japan.
Mehata focus on elucidating the structure of "impressions" that are always follow when people perceive objects and from which we can never erase.
The Factors that have created a sense for perceiving “the atmosphere” that invisible by under the unconscious (what is known as "Kami", "Kegare ", or "Kotodama", etc. ) what has been formed Japanese history, spirituality and cultural formation, and The infinite chain of "Image" that are included to all things that create the human memory is represented as a symbol pattern/noise sound in his concept called Noum.
Released as Mehata Sentimental Legend with music album Noum Zeccyou from Germany's netlabel Mind Plug Records in 2011.
In 2013, had a first solo exhibition as a visual artist, Mehata Hiroshi- Noum Zeccyou at Gallery TEXU in Spain.
In recent years, Mehata has also shown in Portugal, Italy, Indonesia, Tunisia, Australia, and Japan.
Solo Exhibitions, “Mehata Hiroshi Meets Abantal Restaurante(Seville, Spain, 2014) was framed as a part of 2013-2014 Japan-Spain 400th Anniversary”,
“NOUM AMATARA/El Viajero Alado(Jerez, Spain, 2016)” etc.
2023, held a solo exhibition "The Color Cleanser" in Jogjakarta. Indonesia.
Other selected, “Concorso arte Milano 2016 (Milano, Italy, 2016)” ,“la 3ème Session des Journées Méditerranéennes des Arts Visuels à Hammamet(Hammamet, Tunisia 2016)”“Kameyama Art Triennale(Mie,Jp,2017)”, “Makassar Biennale (Makassar, Indonesia, 2019)” "YICCA Prise 21-22/ 18 finalist (Milan, Italy, 2022)" ,etc.
In the music activities,
appeared on the music channel “Atmósfera” in RNE Radio3 (Spain,2014).
had solo music tour “Noum El Final de mundo”. (Cadiz, Spain 2015), etc.
In 2019, under the "Chicago Obihiro Exchange Project presented by Asian Improv aRts Midwest",
Recorded and performed with authentic Avant-garde jazz musicians in Chicago, USA.
2022, “ChicagObihiro” released from Asian Improv Midwest (Chicago, USA)
Not only solo activities, but Mehata also had several music bands and collaborations with a lot of musicians.
From 2012 to 2021, he was in a band called GAIAMAMOO. They had performed at Festival such as “Mixology Festival (NYC,US 2018)”, ”End Tymes 7(NYC, US, 2017)”"XFest(Boston, US, 2018)","Festes Majors Alternatives de Vallcarca(Barcelona, Spain, 2017)".
by Luciano Tellaroli (Art critic, Italy)
quoted from CAM 2016
"Hiroshi Mehata is a musician, representative of the Noise-Experimental Music, whose origins can be found in the futurist Luigi Rassolo, on a journey that passes through the great artistic currents of the twentieth century, Fluxus in particular, where artists such as Walter De Maria, John Cage, La Monte Young, Yoko Ono and Takehisa Kosugi, by hybridizing various artistic disciplines, crossed the boundaries, not only physically.
Today, Mehata renews that thought, through his artistic collaborations (Spain, U.S.A., Austria, Italy…) and his visual art transposes his musical inspiration into forms that reflect it.
Visually capturing the musical feeling by shaping sensorial impulses that refer to the idea of Noun, is a concept that permeates Mehata’s work.
Noun, as the artist defines it, is the invisible noise of our memories, their breath, the “myriad atmosphere” that concentrates and stratifies in the both the collective and personal unconscious.
The works presented here, “Shadows of Noun”, with their musical and iconic sinuosity, carry ancient Japanese wisdom (from the mural drawings that with carbon black and traces of red decorated the graves of Takehara in the 5th century, till the Ukiyo-e of the Edo age that ends with the great art of Hokusai, Utamaro and Hioshige and later re-flourishes during the post-war period thanks to the Gutai group, the first avant-garde movement of the far east) but also knows the gestures of Kline and the fertility of the verbal-visual experimentation that took place throughout the 20th century, expanding the synesthetic penetration in his work.
The unrepeatability of the calligraphic-musical gesture of Hiroshi Mehata recalls the case of Lacan in Lituraterre… “The singularity of the hand destroys the universal” and reflects both in the stylistic coherence that characterizes the artist and in the specific mark of the work, one of great formal refinement. We find two typologies of “Shadows of Noun”: the first can be defined as “gesture painting”, due to the speed of execution that the black brush strokes transmit; the second can be found among the shapes of the blues and whites in which one is immersed in quiet and harmonic vibrations that refer to the memory of water. The fan-mark that seems to strengthen the Japanese identity is iconic. "
