A New Generation in the Harz Mountains

On the left, a lynx stands calm and alert at the edge of a blue green pine forest at dusk, watching. On the right, that calm ends: a red machine, part harvester, part something closer to an animal carcass, tears through a stand of white birches, its circular blade throwing a beam of gold sparks down across the canvas like a wound.

The Harz Mountains are where Germany actually ran this story in reverse. The region's lynx reintroduction began in 2000, bringing back a predator that had been locally extinct for over a century, and the population there is wild and self-sustaining today. Kato paints the aftermath of that success sitting directly next to the machinery that could still undo it.

"A new generation," the title says, without specifying whether it means the lynx or whatever cut down the birches to plant the sapling at the machine's base. The painting leaves both possibilities standing, and leaves the buyer to decide which one they're betting on.