Kei Imazu (b. 1980) is a painter based in Tokyo, Japan who interlaces past, present, and future through a comprehensive act of excavating images taken from the vast sea that is the internet—often times historical relics and artifacts, and other times more contemporary cultural iconographies—alongside everyday objects and occurrences. The word excavating here is crucial. In many ways, Imazu paints with the mentality of an archeologist. She navigates and unearths historical relics that have been destroyed in war or pilfered by treasure hunters that are now kept existent only within the ethereal realms of cyberspace. Imazu digs through literature, philosophy, and poetry derived from different cultures as a demarcating point to begin her work. Layer by layer, she simultaneously conducts acts of pictorial construction and deconstruction, representation and abstraction, and in doing so develops ocular operas that reveal the esoteric in the human condition.
ROH Projects is pleased to present Overgrown, where Imazu shows new works conducted throughout her OPQRSTUDIO residency in Bandung for a durational residency in which she makes new strides in both conceptual and compositional dimensions of her practice. There is no way of knowing what discoveries she has yet to make, but the time spent with ROH and our artists has been truly remarkable.
Kei Imazu utilizes this everyday contemporary internet environment in collecting all sorts of artworks and objects that exist in and beyond the form of an image. After thoroughly going through her great volume of collected data, she distorts, reconstructs, and sketches them on the computer. With the sketch she has created, Imazu traces it onto the canvas using oil paint, a method she currently employs to create her artworks.
Through this contemporary method, she turns the original flat/three-dimensional works and objects into a display of a two-dimensional perception. This two-dimensionality is accented by the contrasting images of three-dimensional objects that she digitally distorts with twists and pulls, which she then pastes onto her sketches. In this process of reconstructing, she challenges the boundaries of virtual/real and the concepts of two-dimensional/three-dimensional by applying objects from the Internet, catalogs, real life, and so on. Additionally, she recaptures one point perspectives and overlapping objects by presenting them in a flat and planar manner, resulting in a peculiar sense of depth. Simultaneously, she rearranges the object’s original context that develops into a unique painting.
Artist
Born 1980, Yamaguchi, Japan
Lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia
Kei Imazu’s painting practice takes root in the peculiar conditions of the contemporary Internet age, where the visual torrent of information becomes a repository to distort and reassemble. These resulting 3D-renderings and digital sketches, by-products of a saturated image world, serve as sketches for her oil paintings. This approach is shaped by the artist’s archaeological impulse and her interest in the recovery and reconstruction of human lifeworlds from material cultures; since moving to Indonesia in 2018, Imazu’s works have come to address the country’s colonial histories as well as the multiple stories and folklores shared across the archipelago, which often contain parallel themes to global mythological narratives. Recently, Imazu’s practice has expanded to include painted sculptures and installations as sites of recovery and reconstruction, where traces of historical and mythical narratives are bound into new layers of understanding and kinship.
Imazu has held several solo exhibitions including Art Basel Paris: Stratum Vein with ROH at Grand Palais, Paris, France (2024); unearth at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2023); Sowed Them to the Earth at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2023); Mapping the Land/Body/Stories of its Past at ANOMALY, Tokyo, Japan (2021); Anda disini / You are here at Museum Haus Kasuya, Kanagawa, Japan (2019); Measuring Invisible Distance at Yamamoto Gendai, Tokyo, Japan (2018); and Overgrown at ROH Projects, Jakarta, Indonesia (2018). Her group exhibitions include Bangkok Art Biennale: Nurture Gaia at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Frieze Seoul, COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); WAGIWAGI at documenta fifteen, Hübner areal, Kassel, Germany (2022); Declaring Distance: Bandung — Leiden at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2022); AAAAHHH!!! Paris Internationale in Paris, France (2018), all featuring her collaborative work with Bagus Pandega; The 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale: silent apple in Changwon, South Korea (2024); Let’s See at ArtSpace @ HeluTrans, Singapore (2024); 1 at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2022); We Paint! at Palais de Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (2022), Last Words at ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2021); We Are Here at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2021); Tiger Orchid at Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach, ROH Projects (2020); Roppongi Crossing: Connexion at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2019); Meet the Collection - 30th Anniversary of the Yokohama Museum of Art at Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan (2019); and Taming Y/Our Passion at Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan (2019); Kei Imazu is the finalist of Prix Jean-François Prat in 2020. Imazu’s works are part of the public collections of various institutions in Japan, among them are MUSEUM HAUS KASUYA in Kanagawa as well as Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, Taguchi Art Collection, and OKETA COLLECTION in Tokyo. Her works are also part of the public collections of San San Jose Museum of Art, California, U.S.A. and X Museum, Beijing, China. Kei Imazu will present her first mid-career survey in the forthcoming solo exhibition Tanah Air at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2025).
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