For her first solo exhibition with Sato Gallery in Paris, Japanese artist Ai Natori presents UNDERCURRENT, a new body of work shaped by the invisible currents that pass between people.

For years, blue has been at the centre of Natori’s work. She often returns to the ocean when speaking about it: a place where life begins, but also one deep enough to disappear into. Blue holds these two sensations at once, without resolving the contradiction.

Within her paintings, faces emerge from blue while hair moves across the canvas like water, sometimes becoming waves, rivers or imagined landscapes.

The figures themselves have changed over time. Initially imaginary and partly inspired by her younger sister, they gradually became less attached to a single person. Through encounters and exchanges with people looking at her work, Natori began to see something of the viewer in these faces, and sometimes something of herself.

This movement between the inner world and the outside world lies at the heart of UNDERCURRENT. Like a current moving beneath the surface of water, thoughts and emotions can remain unseen while continuing to travel from one person to another.

The exhibition brings together works from Blue and Blueness with the darker world of Night and wonderer. In this more introspective series, Natori imagines thoughts carried on the waves of the internet, drifting through a silent night and moving through darkness in search of a light.

For UNDERCURRENT, this movement also leaves the surface of the canvas.

Natori introduces ceramic works into the exhibition, extending figures that have until now existed primarily through painting into physical space. Small enough to be held in the hand, the sculptures are placed in relation to the paintings and conceived through the Japanese idea of shakkei, or borrowed scenery. The paintings become landscapes for the ceramic figures, while the figures in turn change the way the paintings are seen.

From another angle, a body can resemble a mountain. Hair can become water. A portrait can begin to feel like a landscape.

Natori’s practice has developed around this shifting relationship between the human figure, blue and the worlds that surround them. Her work moves between intimacy and distance, the individual and the landscape, what can be seen and what remains beneath the surface.

Natori was first presented in Paris by Sato Gallery in Blooming of a Heritage in April 2025. UNDERCURRENT marks her first solo exhibition with the gallery in Paris.

Exhibition information
21 October – 1 November 2026
11am – 7pm
Open Tuesday to Saturday, exceptionally on Sunday 1 November
Free entry, open to all

Vernissage
Tuesday 20 October, 5pm – 9pm
Open to all, no reservation needed

Sato Gallery
58 rue Charlot
75003 Paris

Reservation is only recommended for the public opening days of the exhibition.
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