SHOHEI KATAYAMA
ARTIST
Shohei Katayama is a Japanese American artist whose work explores the relationships between nature, technology, and the scientific forces that shape human experience. His practice is attuned to liminal spaces where opposites converge: light and dark, life and death, beauty and danger, the organic and the artificial. Working across drawing, sculpture, kinetic objects, and installation, Katayama investigates interconnected systems and the invisible forces that bind them.
Drawing from ecological studies, physics, material phenomena, grief, and Eastern philosophies, Katayama examines the underlying patterns and disruptions that emerge within natural and technological systems. His work often uses materials, mechanisms, and responsive processes that adapt, evolve, mutate, or shift over time. Through these transformations, he reveals entanglements between bodies, environments, machines, and unseen forces, creating works that invite reflection on fragility, interdependence, and ecological awareness.
Katayama received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award by the International Sculpture Center, the Frank-Ratchye Fund for the Art at the Frontier Award, and a finalist in the 21C Artadia award and Tulsa Artist Fellowship, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally, and internationally at the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy; 5 Manhattan West Building in New York; Plaxall Gallery in Long Island City; Littman Gallery in Portland, OR, and more.
Katayama has participated in NARS International Residency in Brooklyn, NY; the Mattress Factory International Residency; the Facebook Artist-in-Residence Program; the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard, Norway; the Labverde Amazon Residency in Manaus, Brazil; the International Sculpture Center Residency at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton Township, NJ; Peyton Evans Artist Residency in Key West, FL; Tough Art Residency Program in Pittsburgh, PA, and at the Asia Institute Crane House in Louisville, KY.
