Mike Saijo is an artist currently living in Los Angeles, California. He is a contextual artist who mines the history of culture and reveals the deeper myths that rule over our social realities in science, politics, philosophy, and spiritual practices.
He was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was influenced by media culture (i.e. books, television, movies, magazines). Saijo takes the approach of “open text” which takes an object, such as a book, transforms the material from sequential to spatial order, and opens up a space to create new meaning. HIs unconventional process often involves Xerox copy technology, office supplies, and building materials to construct art with a wide range of subject matter from mid-century modern architecture, WW2 photos, cinema stills, imaginary landscapes, and the history of fashion.
He rejects the notion of art as a fixed idea defined by history, instead he reclaims history, and redefines it based on “human experience”. His work takes the form of installation, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media.
He refers to the notion of “memory construction” as an entry point to understanding his complex body of work. Memory consists of a combination of feeling, word and image which shape our perception reality. As a youth Saijo spent much of his time sailing with his father off the coast of Southern California which in his recent work work he has revisited exploring themes of loss, entropy, transformation and the unconscious represented by an oceanscape where the boundaries are blurred between the sky and the sea. Mythology and classic tales (i.e. Homer’s Odyssey, Stories of the Seven Seas) are reduced to abstraction and takes the form of an empty sign for the viewer to project their own meaning into, navigate their way, and continue their journey between the familiar and the unknown.
