HAGIWARA PROJECTS is pleased to announce the solo exhibition “fields” by Shunsuke Imai, opening on Saturday, September 21st. Imai garnered attention for his large-scale solo exhibitions at the Marugame Inokuma-Genichiro Museum of Contemporary Art in 2022 and at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 2023. These exhibitions featured his signature undulating stripes and vibrant colors, creating an expansive, open space where the works resonated with one another.

This will be the first solo exhibition at the gallery in four years. The exhibition will showcase new paintings featuring boldly cropped color fields and drawing works that combine paper cut with a laser cutter. The title fields reflects Imai’ s process of “discovering landscapes within his own works,” evoking vast landscapes cut through color. It also nods to the Color Field movement in American abstract painting. Imai revisits the approach of Ellsworth Kelly, known for depicting realistic elements such as parts of buildings, through the lens of a contemporary individual living in Japan. Incorporating elements of Tokyo’s city lights and the vivid hues of fast fashion stores, Imai responds to the overwhelming flood of information and imagery in modern society through the medium of painting.

Imai’ s works stimulate the unconscious act of “seeing” through the interplay of figure and ground created by his combinations of color. His art urges us to return to the essence of visual expression, emphasizing the importance of being aware of how we see and what we choose to focus on.

Shunsuke Imai
Born in 1978 in Fukui Prefecture, lives and works in Tokyo. He completed his MA in Oil Painting at Musashino Art University in 2004. Major solo exhibitions include: ” Skirt and Scene” Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2023, Tokyo), ” Skirt and Scene” Marugame Inokuma Genichiro Museum of Contemporary Art (2022, Kagawa), “range finder” Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim (2019, Neuenhaus, Germany), and “Shiseido Art Egg vol. 8: Shunsuke Imai ‘range finder'” at Shiseido Gallery (2014, Tokyo). Major group exhibitions include: ” A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2024, Tokyo), ” Iro Iroiro [World of Color and Artworks]” Fukui Fine Art Museum (2021, Fukui), ” MOT Collection : Please to meet you. New Acquisitions in recent years” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019, Tokyo), ” Reborn -Update for the Future- Part Ⅱ Creating the NextStage Collection x Contemporary Artists” Fukui Fine Art Museum (2019, Fukui), ” Paintings Here and Now” Fuchu Art Museum (2018, Tokyo), “VOCA 2015: The Vision of Contemporary Art 2015″ The Ueno Royal Museum (2015, Tokyo), and ” The Way of Painting” Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2014, Tokyo).