Norio Imai
, Osaka, Japan — Lives and works in Osaka, Japan
Since the very start of his artistic career, Norio Imai has challenged the dogma of artistic convention. He creates bulbous reliefs that exist somewhere in-between object and painting. By placing material underneath the surface of his works, Imai creates monumental monochrome white paintings out of almost nothing. He considers white to be the ultimate colour, a non-colour that combines all colours in perfect harmony. Imai often repaints his work with an additional layer of paint to preserve the depth and purity of the whiteness. To him, white is a landscape made up of nothingness and emptiness.
Norio Imai's works reflect on an increased shift toward the feminine, which is one of the most significant changes currently taking place in the world we live today. Imai's work can be described as maternal, with fluid and matrixial qualities gaining importance over unambiguous masculinity. In this complete pureness, his works embrace all possibilities.
About Norio Imai
It's hard to give a brief explanation of White, because there are all kinds of Whites. More than a mere visual disparity, White is both a passive colour that can be painted over by other colours, and a colour that can envelop and cover and blot out anything... In a word, perhaps it is in itself something beyond coloration that sits on the border between existence and non-existence, or that straddles both sides of that boundary." (Norio Imai, 2015)
From 1965 onwards, Imai added projections and moving structures to his works, creating a more kinetic type of art. After the break-up of Gutai in '72 (the avant-garde Japanese group of which he was a member), Imai began experimenting with photography and video with which conceptual tendencies were strengthened. Despite his deep engagement with digital media, his work ultimately points back to the importance of "lived" time, materials and human interaction.