Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku is pleased to present a solo exhibition Beginning from White by Norio Imai. 

Gallery Talk will be held at the exhibition with Norio Imai and Koichi Kawasaki, Professor, the Department of Creative Media Studies, Konan Women’s University.

Also, a research book on Norio Imai’s works is published, written by Ms. Ming Tiampo, Associate Professor, the School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University. Ms. Ming was cocurator of Gutai: Splendid Playground held at Guggenheim Museum in 2013.

Half a century has passed now since my first solo exhibition as a 17-year-old. Having jumped into Gutai in my high school days and encountering contemporary art, I can now claim that the university for me was truly ‘Gutai’ university. This exhibition—which presents the white relief formation I produced a few years after 1964, which was my initial working period, and a part of my works in the 1970s after the dissolution of Gutai—is not only an opportunity to look at my original intention as an artist but also probably significant in recognizing where I currently stand.

As I have been recently sorting out my past works, I have realized one thing. Although media and methods I have been used-such as non-formative yet materialized objects, light, sound, photography, and video-seem to have greatly changed and widened their range, the concepts of my expression, including my own interest and habits, have not changed and have some similarities with my past works. Not a few have been disposed of or lost among my past works, it is interesting that I can still find something “new” from them as my memories related come back. From now on I would like to seek what I could not achieve in what I did in the past and what issues I am aware of concerning the present time.
- Norio Imai

*image (left)
© Norio Imai
Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates