Kazuto Imura “mirrorrim”
Kazuto Imura is an artist who graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts and completed the Department of Inter-Media Art at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2017.
In this exhibition, his debut solo show, he presented eight series of works that reinterpret the history of the mirror and reconfigure the various materials and techniques that have historically been used as mirrors.
The exhibition title “mirrorrim” is a coined word combining “mirror” and “rim.” It is an exhibition of people and images framed by mirrors.
Imura, who researches the history of the mirror and lookism, disassembles and reconfigures every material and technique that has existed as a mirror to create mirrors “in which oneself is not reflected.”
According to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage, recognizing that the body is a single whole through seeing one’s own image reflected in a mirror or through seeing others is the entrance to self-recognition. This cannot be attained through one’s own existence alone; bodily unity is acquired through comparison with images or with others.
The act of considering things objectively, or from a bird’s-eye view, also becomes possible only by projecting one’s own image within the brain and comparing it with others. Lookism and the negative emotions that move people always arise from comparison — that is, from relativity.
I research the materials and techniques that compose mirrors, transform them in my own way, and create mirrors in which oneself is not reflected. They are devices that temporarily cause comparison to be abandoned, and that make one recognize oneself as absolute.
Kazuto Imura
The following work, coated with a two-way mirror finish, was also striking.
The conceptual axis is clear, the imagery of the works is original, and we were able to see truly powerful pieces.
