Rose

Roses originate in the upper left corner of this canvas and grow toward the chimney rising through the center, dark pink blooms advancing across the diagonal rather than just decorating it. The chimney is active, a thin wash of grey smoke drifting off its cap. Pale hands reach up out of the wreckage at its base, straining toward that same upper-left corner, and a cheetah runs the opposite way through the composition, away from the industrial half of the painting and into the natural one.

Two things are moving toward opposite sides of this canvas at once. The roses are advancing on the chimney, not just climbing it. The hands and the cheetah are both pulling away from the machine and toward the light. Kato doesn't resolve which direction wins. He paints the moment where all three are still in motion.

Take this piece out of the golden light for a second and it's the same story running through the rest of the group: nature and industry sharing a frame, neither one winning it outright. What makes Rose different is that you can see the movement in both directions at once, roses advancing one way, a hand and a cheetah pulling the other. That's a harder thing to hold in one image than a clean victory, and it's more honest to the rest of what's in this collection.

This is the most compositionally active painting in the release, three separate elements in visible motion, moving in opposite directions, held inside one stable image. That kind of tension is difficult to sustain in a static painting, and it's the reason this canvas rewards being looked at more than once, which is exactly what a collector wants from a piece they're going to live with.