Jun Imamura

Born in Kyoto City, Japan

BFA (Summa Cum Laude); Hunter College, The City University of New York 
MFA, Tokyo University of the Arts
Ph.D. in Literature

Scholarship and Grants:
2007 Artist Fellowship Vermont Studio Center,
Vermont, the United States

2023 Solo Show “Brutal”
Hikari Home, Tokyo, Japan

2022 Solo Show “Endangered”
Gallery Storks, Tokyo, Japan

2020 Solo Show “Painting 2020”
Gallery Storks, Tokyo, Japan

2019 Solo Show “Guardians”
Shoga Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2018 Solo Show “12 gaze”
Nakagawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2016 Paper “Form and Coexistence: The Life of Berg's Opera Lulu”
Alban Berg [16], Alban Berg Gesellschaft, Japan

2014 Special Exhibition for the 20th Annual Meeting of the Art Education Studies
The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan

2012 Solo Show “2010/4/03 Wien”
Zap Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Group Show “GTS Art Project”
Shitamachi Base, Tokyo, Japan

2007 BFA Degree Show
The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery,
New York, the United States
Open Studio “Tokyo Blue”
Hunter College MFA Building, New York, the United States

2006 Solo Show “Red Paintings”
New York Public Library, 96th Street Branch and Aguilar Branch,
New York, the United States
Open Studio “Digital Cell Phone Paintings”
Hunter College MFA Building, New York, the United States

2000 Philip Morris Art Award 2000
Yebisu Garden Place, Tokyo, Japan

1999 The 28th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Kyoto Municipal Museum, Japan
The 9th Art Box Exhibition
Art Museum Ginza, Tokyo, Japan

1993 Awarded “The Mark Kostabi Competition Grand Prize”
Worked in collaboration with Mark Kostabi, Tokyo, Japan

1992 The 2nd Art Box Exhibition
Azabu Museum of Art and Crafts, Tokyo, Japan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait x Faces

John Cassavetes' American film Faces (1968) is fascinating. Shot with coarse grain and

unfocused, “faces” captures and projects the ever-changing innermost feelings of the human

creature as “images.”

Throughout art history, the “face” has long been revered as a crucial part that conveys the entire

human form, despite its actual size being only about 20 centimeters in height.

The “face,” composed of eyes, nose, and mouth, transcends self and other, existing solely as

a profoundly mysterious representation of humanity. This very “image” itself, as an unceasing

question of life, continues to be unraveled upon the ready-made-canvas.

 

Digital Image Painting

Digital Image Painting is a work created by printing out images obtained from digital cameras,

the internet, or camera phones—including those taken by others—and then realistically “overpainting”

them with oil paint. This overpainting can be described as an expression where the ‘underpainting’

(or “finished image”) is entrusted to another, and the self is not the primary subject.

If the existence of the self (the inner world) is not defined by the ego, but rather becomes recognized

only through communication with others (the outer world), then the method of communication here

—“overpainting information” = “simply painting”—as an act of consciousness shapes the existence of

the self more distinctly. I repeat this act = expression as a reflection of mass production and

consumption's fleeting time in the digital society, and as correlative communication with others

in contemporary society (the very essence of human existence).