VENUES

Yumiko Chiba Associates (YCA) was launched as an artist management office in 1988. Since then, YCA has been planning and organizing contemporary art exhibitions at galleries and museums inside and outside of Japan. In 2010, YCA opened its own commercial gallery in Shinjuku, Tokyo, as a “viewing room” and has held a large number of solo shows for established artists such as Jiro Takamatsu and Beat Streuli, along with other artists from the young generation.

YCA represents the estates of several important artists in Japanese contemporary art history, including Jiro Takamatsu, Masafumi Maita, and Katsuro Yoshida. YCA has also published many research booklets with critical essays, contributing to interpretations of artists’ work in an art historical context.

Yumiko Chiba Associates will present an exhibition of work by Norio Imai. The show will feature a reproduction of his installation Limited Space (1971), in which carpets are pasted on the floor of the gallery, making people aware of the space beyond the boundaries between inside and outside, or back and front. Also included will be his photographic work Square-Glass/Grass (1970), which attempts to visualize time. In this exhibition, Imai’s important early works will come together after a half-century has passed since each work was made.

Imai was born in Osaka in 1946. He joined the Gutai Art Association in 1965 as the youngest member and the following year he held his first solo show at the age of 20 at Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka. Imai presented white works, in which he placed objects inside canvases and explored the boundaries between a flat and a three-dimensional object. Around 1970, he became interested in the development of technology with the rapid economic growth in Japan and started producing works incorporating new media, such as photography and video. Imai’s practice is extensive and also includes outdoor works. He continues to energetically continue his activities, holding solo exhibitions at galleries like Axel Vervoordt (Belgium, 2018–19) and participating in large-scale exhibitions at institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, 2013).