YOHEI IMAMURA

Artist bio

live printing
July 30 - September 18, 2016
Opening live printing: Saturday, July 30, 4pm-, Party: 6-8pm
Summer holidays: 8/8-26

The artist will do a live silk-screening in the gallery during this show.
Schedule: 7/30, 4-6pm, 8/5, 8/6, 8/27, 9/2, 9/4, 9/8 noon-5pm, 9/9, 9/10

YOHEI IMAMURA

YOHEI IMAMURA work in progress 2016, silk-screen print, oil ink

KAYOKOYUKI is pleased to announce the solo exhibition with Yohei Imamura. Yohei Imamura was born in 1979 in Fukuoka, Japan.
Recently, Imamura presented his work in "CSP2" at Kuwasawa Design School, Tokyo, 2014, ”Marsupials" curated by Taro Izumi at TALION GALLERY, Tokyo, 2012, "camaboco” at Tokyo Zokei University, Tokyo, 2010, ”Draw print book” at esplanade, Singapore, 2008, "WORM HOLE episode6" at magical,ARTROOM, Tokyo, 2007, ”T&S EXISTANCE" at T&S GALLERY, Tokyo, 2005-2006. Lives and works in Kanagawa.

Since his student days, Yohei Imamura has consistently created print art that can be associated with sculpture through the action of layering resinous oil ink hundreds and thousands of times, by employing manual duplication technology in silkscreen printing. By use of the screen which is created through filling the mesh openings with special emulsion by drawing directly on the screen, he produces complex geometric patterns or forms suggestive of mountain ranges.
The techniques upon production were invented by the artist himself, and it takes from half a year to even over a year to finish each piece of artwork. Therefore, he carefully designs the layout of the table upon which the silkscreen device is mounted and of the shelf on which artwork is stored, to include even the support medium of the artwork, in order to actualize a smooth production process in harmony with the artist’s physical movement.

His new artworks, “tsurugi No.1” and “tsurugi No.2” which will be introduced in this exhibition, employed a real Japanese mountain as a motif and was produced based on the contour lines of topographical map. 222 screens, the same number of the contour lines of the mountain, are prepared, and the artist prints each screen about 40 times which produces approximately 0.4 mm layer for each, and, therefore, about 9,000 of those layers are accumulated in total. Another artwork, “tsurugi No. 3,” shows a different appearance of the mountain even though the same screens as “tsurugi No.1” and “tsurugi No.2” were used, because the artist printed each screen only twice.
Besides, the production process itself was made into his expression from various perspectives in artwork such as “log, tsurugi” in which various data, such as colors of inks used and the number of prints conducted by each screen, are recorded on a panel, and “turn, tsurugi” which was created by transferring the ink, which remained on the screen after cleanup, onto paper.

As Imamura has been long accustomed to mountain climbing, it seems that he made use of the magnificent view from the mountain top in his artwork which strikes viewers while evoking the accumulation of countless actions during production as well as a buildup of natural phenomenon or eternal time. As can be seen from the abstract forms which surround the mountain artwork, he seems to be actively accepting, or even enjoying, errors unique to hand working and uncontrollable factors that occur naturally at the periphery of the central production process that is proceeded foot by foot in a planned way toward the mountain top.

Imamura started production of these new artworks in June 2015, and during this exhibition, he will work in the presence of an audience towards completion on Wednesday, September 14, 2016, which is during the last week of the exhibition.

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