As promised, (here is) a small note on Imamura Hajime's exhibition entitled 'Venue of the Outside' that was on show at Nomart, Osaka, from December through to this January. From the text at Nomart; Imamura's introduction; a review at Town Art Gallery; and also by going through the reasonable sized images on Normart's new homepage I was able to get a pretty good feel for the work [I was, too, able to see a few works of Imamura's at Roppongi Crossing today as I get ready to post this, and helped reaffirm hunch].

As the intro' tells, Nomart's project room, Loft and Cube, was completely turned over to the workings of Imamura. The results are said to be impressive, and gave visitors a chance to fully immerse into the goings on in habitat--the internal/absence--articulated by the placement of objects, some dysfunctional, some working, others articulated into a strange space by small light sources, movement, or agreements. And then there was the external--the objects themselves, their outside presence, which apart from their surfaces appear empty or hollow of meaning past the objectness; and then together--to make up the whole Imamura World.

A book by the late Miki Sigeo, a Tokyo University medical graduate, who later moved to Health and Wellness at Tokyo Art University, and who wrote personal though scholarly books on the taxonomy of life, none of which I've read, provides a model for which to un-firm our common sense of life.

Here one of Miki Siego's models looks to be the center of the show, or at least is the core of Imamura's introduction.

Imamura describes Miki Sigeo's model of a plant, and an animal/human's colon. The first consideration according to the classification of life is that from the single cell ameba up the list always has plant-life at the rear of the animal. Through Miki's model, and this must be also Imamura's, this simple hierarchical progression, from the simplest to most complex, can be easily destabilized.

The model given has two centers.

The first center is the colon of the animal or human. A colon is an empty internal pipe that fills up when we eat, and empties out when we don't. If we were to take this colon out to make it a column, and turn it inside-out the internal walls of the colon/column would be facing outwards. On the wall are follicles that, too, stand out. The model then turns from meat to plant, and offers the second center with the inside-out colon and protruding follicles now taking on vegetation life resembling a plant, from its tiny sensitive hair feelers up to, I guess, hinting at a model of a tree with more robust protruding branches. Imamura says, and I guess this is according to Miki Sigeo, that if we consider the colon from a different perspective, then inside each animal, and indeed, inside each of us, lives an inside-out growing plant. The empty upright, colon with its sensitive feelers unmoving touches and senses what can't be seen. To strengthen this augment, and to invert the hierarchy of the taxonomy of life, Imamura continues with Miki's idea. From single cell up, the division multiplies and multiplies until the external sheaf is complete, after which something happens to the external cells and they change their identity to move inside to multiply and build the internal parts and organs. The model comes home and now identifies strongly with Imamura's work.

Imamuma provides the viewer with an environment that sometimes is hauntingly absent of life, at other times takes on a personal environment--one, for instance, of a Japanese room where it is easy to interact. There is such a room in the exhibition, and has a kotatsue, a small table that has a heater underneath the top with a blanket over a frame over which rests a tabletop.

There is small basket of Japanese mandarins, mekuns, on the tabletop, a television on a cabinet unit, and an oil heater--all working. Imamura is not at all interested in their functionality, but in their outside form for what they can convey as an unseen inside space. The domestic setting, with visitors moving around, without their shoes--they needed to take them off before going into this recreated room--and re-meeting with the objects, can sensitize to a space inside/outside? the given environment. This is not a formal space, but one where you can relax.

What looks to be an astonishingly beautiful room proves less homely despite the employment of household stuff. A table sits in space, empty on top, empty underneath, and little other context to help it stand as art. A small stool that moves draws near below a circular light shade and a functioning light. Over on the wall a mirror reflects the objects and another light as source, and heightens the space between the stool, the light shade, and the odd placed light, so at the right angle and moment a reflection turns into an active live space.

Elsewhere is a refrigerator with the door swung half open. Inside cellular growth takes place, and could be either animal or plant. A plant form is caught within and gets dangerously close to a literal translation, while still managing to tinker with the poetic. On top of the small refrigerator is a kettle of similar structure though thicker wire has been used.While much of the tactility has been scooped out the cell-like structure continues to exist in three dimensions.

Growth continues and there are more cells.This time it doesn't link to internal object instead the internal face of the external - the walls and floor of the gallery. From what I can make out these multiplying cells don't make much in particular, just sit, either as flat two dimensional growths, or three dimensions morphs in space. [The three dimensional wire work was at Roppongi Crossing and was very beautiful. It had a long wire root growing up through the wire cells, a thin column, which at the bottom had some ancient botanical motive colored bluish green].

A question often remains after a visit to Imamura's world, and the question is where is it that he wishes to take us, and how are we meant to feel and respond? I half-hold the question too, but I'm happy for it to dingle-dangle, much how the outside world and the inside dramas fit together -- very loosely.

Venue of the Outside - ran from 2003.12.20-2004.1.31 at NOMART, Osaka