The Kassel-based artist Kazuo Katase died on January 9, 2024 at the age of 77. Born in Shizuoka, Japan, Katase developed a multifaceted, intermedia oeuvre from the 1970s onwards, encompassing photography, video art, painting and spatial installations. Katase came to Germany in 1975 at the invitation of Klaus Hoffmann, the director of the Städtische Galerie im Schloss Wolfsburg. The early versatility of his work is already expressed in the catalog of his first solo exhibition. It reads: "His work can be roughly described as something between multimedia and art-in-the-head. He is a painter, draughtsman, photographer, photo-object producer, action artist, filmmaker, videotape maker and head artist." [Klaus Hoffmann in: Kazuo Katase. 1st European solo exhibition. Complete Works (Documentation) and Recent Works, Wolfsburg 1975]. A description that is also valid for his later work.

Katase's artistic work reflects his in-depth engagement with the cultures of East and West, the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism, European intellectual history and the currents of European and American conceptual art and minimal art. His installations can often be understood as symbols and 'environments' for thoughts: Using color negative photographs, color filters, neon tubes and sparingly installed basic forms, he creates spaces whose effect is geared towards sublimity and sensual presence. Since 2001, his installation "Blue Dancer" has been floating above the Fulda within sight of the Walter Lübke Bridge.

For Jan Hoet's documenta 9 (1992), Katase realized the installation "Night Museum", which was shown as a "room within a room" in the Neue Galerie: in a walk-in room made of plywood walls, he staged a large-format photograph bathed in green-blue light. It shows the moment when Rubens' painting "The Fall from Hell of the Damned", which had been severely damaged as a result of an intentional attack, is carried out of the hall of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Leaning against the outer wall of the wooden construction is a second, much smaller crate made of cardboard, the front of which is covered with the image of a sleeping homeless person. Viewed together, the components of the installation thematize the endangerment of art and human existence and thus protection, defencelessness and exclusion within society.

In 1997, Katase designed the stage set for Tankred Dorst's play "The Legend of Poor Heinrich", which was shown at the Staatstheater Kassel as part of the documenta 10 accompanying program. He also contributed to Jan Hoet's legendary exhibition "Chambres d'amis" in Ghent in 1986.

Kazuo Katase, whom the HNA recently praised as a "philosopher of emptiness" (obituary from January 25, 2024), had lived in Kassel since 1976.