Katsu Sawada USA, b. 1982

Katsu Sawada  is a Japanese-American new media artist based in New York City. His works involve technology, public intervention and include commentary on commercialism, privacy and digital culture. As a result, his practice includes drone painting, sculpture, digital media, conceptual works and crypto art. The artist's visual and digital projects question notions of reality, fiction, and ‘graffiti,’ by conceptually integrating ideas of vandalism with commercialism and technology.

 

His paintings are created in a symbiotic gestural application of atomized enamel paint sprayed by a remotely controlled customized quadrocopter drone onto an acrylic coated canvas. The drone is a semiautonomous collaborator. Drones are voyeurs and recorders, used to exploit access and proximity as image-gathering devices. In KATSU’s practice, the drone’s purpose is subverted; it is an image creator.