Sowed Them to the Earth

Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce Kei Imazu: Sowed Them to the Earth, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and her first in the United States, running from July 27 to September 9, 2023. Debuting eleven new oil paintings and two wire sculptures, Imazu’s point of departure for this exhibition is the myth of the goddess Hainuwele, whose death propagated root crops on Seram Island in Indonesia. Her fantastical paintings connect the region’s ecology to its cultural and colonial histories using gestural mark- making and hyperreal depictions of the body, plants, geological maps and ancestral wooden sculptures. Imazu’s practice is world building, and as a mother herself, celebrates a maternal origin for all living beings.

Born in Yamaguchi, Japan in 1980 and educated at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, Kei Imazu’s painting practice begins on her computer. Using images she takes herself or finds online, the artist creates 3D renderings of objects and digitally collages them to serve as sketches for her paintings. Translating her tableaus into oil paintings, Imazu’s shadow and tonality mimic stage lighting, while her vivid color and linework capture a kind of technological realism.

The artist’s newest paintings incorporate images of root vegetables from Indonesian markets and sculptural objects found in local antique stores into surreal compositions. Curves of Time (2023) depicts a Jōmon Venus figurine tucked between slices of glowing orange and deep purple yams to suggest a dialogue between the Japanese goddess figure and the Hainuwele myth. Indeed, fragmented dogū figures have been discovered throughout Japan, where sustenance rituals from the Jōmon period also sought to yield crops from the body of a birth goddess. In the background, a spine and ribcage pose ideas around life and death, birth and decay, and the interconnectedness of our corporeal experience to the Earth.

Lush green and brown earth tones in Green Veins / Falling Goddess (2023) parallel Hainuwele’s anatomy with the island’s geology and petroleum extraction. At six by six feet, the painting is an entanglement of Indonesian vegetation, mammary glands, and organs threaded together with a vein-like outline of a human figure, launching an ecofeminist critique of colonialism and invading bodies against the reproductive labor of birth and the maternal energy of land. At over 11 feet wide and 6 feet tall, the largest work in the exhibition titled Blossoming Organs (2023) melds bodily and ecological narratives into a poetic retelling of Hainuwele’s matriarchal legacy. A floating mass of realistic and abstract body parts, tubers, and animals rise from sweeping brush strokes and clamor above the skeleton of the goddess whose death would bring forward life.

Sowed Them to the Earth invites viewers to contend with the complex relationship between humans, nature, and its feminine spirit, moving beyond exploitation and towards protection and care.

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).