Kei Imazu - Tanah Air
11 January- 23 March, 2025 at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
I rarely read anything about art shows before going expressly because I don’t want to know what kind of marketing spin the gallery or press is putting on the show. Even worse, I don’t want to know the artist statement or critic’s interpretation. To me, the purity of seeing the art on its own is the point of art. Anything more is something entirely different and secondary. As such, I have no idea what Kei Imazu is “about” or what his works mean. I can only describe my feeling and conclusions about seeing it to impart some experience to you, or perhaps to induce you to also want to see it.
I’ll start by saying that there was a darkened room to your left when entering the gallery with a large poster-style collage on the wall. I didn’t like it because it reminded me of an exhibition ante-room where everyone takes a selfie in front of a poster of a major work of the show. There was also a sculptural installation in this room with tubes of blood and various body-related shapes which seemed overtly literal and rudimentary at the same time. I suppose this room was supposed to introduce the show by saying - “here comes some grotesque body art for you.” Maybe it was something else. There was also a vaguely African/Colonial sense to everything as well. Was it autobiographical? Commentary? I don’t know. It didn’t resonate on any deep level with me.
On the other side of this room, connected by a horizontal slit in the wall was a quite cohesive room featuring more painterly collages on the walls with a central sculpture area. While these pieces had ostensibly the same topic and form as the first room, I felt they worked much better. They were less literal. I felt I could become part of the shapes and their energy vibrated in a meaningful way. I especially liked the tiny painting on the tile platform in the above photo. Specifically I liked the feeling that the artist himself must have placed it in that position. There was an intersection of viewer and artist in it.
The next room housed the bulk of the works and immediately I felt a difference moving into the room. I often come to this gallery and I quickly realized that the floor had been changed to pink carpet. This carpet reminded me of insulation wrap used in construction. I don’t know if it was identical or chosen on purpose for a meaning but the colour was effective in creating a different and more enjoyable mood from the other rooms and also a more human and organic cohesion to the many works in the room. Was it supposed to resemble raw skin?
The drawing-collages on the walls didn’t hold my interest in their singularity but as a whole they seemed to provide a backdrop for a kind of play for the sculptures in the centre of the room.
I should note there was another room off the left of this photo which I also felt was forgettable. There was more politically/culturally suggestive overtones and a seemingly inoperable set of 3D miniature concrete printers. Perhaps it had some connection to 3rd world building? Again, it seemed both simplistic and opaque at the same time.
The line-drawing style sculptures had great vivacity as both objects and images and I found myself drawn to “enter” into their frames as one would play with hanging leaves of a tree as a kid. These flat-oriented shapes somewhat introduced their 3D versions in the centre of the room. In a kind of Alice-in-wonderland becoming of literal into physical, it seemed like the collages, flat sculptures and 3D sculptures were like a transformation of a make-believe fantasy into reality. You can touch the mushrooms.
This flower in particular erupted with presence in the centre of the room. I checked around the floor and couldn’t see any visible mounting lines. It was if it had been thrust into the floor as one would stab a knife into a block of wood when you finished with it. The lack of a plinth made it especially interesting. Again, as if we’d entered the Willie Wonka world for real.
Similarly, this object, while less interesting to me as a shape had a remarkable force in how it was standing. Real life objects simply do not stand up with such a small footprint. The dagger-esque nature was powerful, although in general I could do without all the skulls everywhere. I think to do a skull takes an enormous amount of effort to undo the myriad of pop imagery and movie references we’ve been inundated with. It didn’t succeed here.
I really enjoyed this view looking back from the end of the room. From this vantage point we could see all the viewers interacting with the other objects and they all seemed of the same type. Especially walking amongst the 2D monkey-bird-rat like forms it seemed to unite the animal nature of the viewers and the forms. Again, the pink floor seems pivotal as a unifying field. With white it would be an empty void. With gallery wood flooring it would be an alien combination of forced presentation. The pink was naturally correct for these items.
There was another long, narrow room adjacent to the pink room with many paintings of fish on wood squares and a large painting with some smaller kinetic sculptures. I don’t know if this artist was the same, but it didn’t seem in any way related to the other rooms. I felt nothing from anything in this room, other than a particular tropical heat and smell that perhaps could have been used to good effect in the other rooms.
CONCLUSION
I liked this show overall and while it seemed to show half heavy-handed imagery and “gallery presentation”, the main room was wonderfully “of-itself” and offered multiple levels of relation. This is the kind of contemporary art you want to go see every week to remain engaged in the problems of making art nowadays and to be presented with some new and inspiring answers.
PRICE
1400JPY
AVAILABILITY
11 January - 23 March, 2025 - Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
THE RATING
5/10 Absolute
7/10 Relative
Your donation helps keep the reviews coming!