Katsuhiko Shimaji (hereinafter Shimaji) : "Welcome. First, let's start with a 'slancebar.' It's a Gaelic word meaning 'to your health,' and it's used as a toast in Scotland."
Holding Salon de Shimaji's signature spicy bowl, the conversation between the young painter and the bartender began.

Shimaji : "How many works have you drawn so far?"

Shinya Imanishi (hereinafter Imanishi) : "Since adopting my current technique, I've created approximately 30 to 40 works."

Shimaji : "So, even though you're pursuing your art career, you still intend to take over the family business of making Nara pickles?"

Imanishi : "That's right. It's a family business that's been passed down for generations, so I'd feel bad if I didn't take over, and as the eldest son, I felt I had no choice but to do it. If I take over the family business, I won't be able to travel around the world, but I thought about what I could do to pursue my dreams while taking over the family business, and I chose to become a painter."

Shimaji: "Where do you create your artwork?"

Imanishi: "Currently, I live in a place that is far from my family home."

Shimaji : "First of all, what was the inspiration for coming up with this technique? Is that kind of style common in contemporary art?"

Imanishi : "The idea for that technique started with the question, 'What does it mean for something to exist?' and 'What does it mean to see?'"
While I was creating various works and going through a process of trial and error, I was struggling with whether I could update my current style as a Japanese artist creating contemporary paintings, and I hit a wall. That's when I happened to watch a TV program featuring a special on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, a series of ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
At that time, it was a well-known fact in the art world that the Japanese were the only ones depicting rain using lines.
When I thought deeply about how Westerners represent rain with dots, while the Japanese represent it by connecting dots to form lines, I wondered if, conversely, displaying dots together might allow the image to connect in the mind as lines, and then surfaces, to emerge.
If I were to ask a Japanese person about the act of "seeing" today, I would say that it can appear realistic, but it might also appear as something else entirely, so why not try it out...?
And when I questioned myself in an attempt to deepen my understanding of painting, I realized that painting involves paint, and I wondered if I could express how the brushstrokes of the paint move. That's when this 'digging' technique came about, and it took shape as a technique."

Photo: Fujii Taku

Shimaji: "That's a very new technique. It's amazing that you came up with it yourself! When did you start using this technique?"

Imanishi : "It was about two years ago, shortly before I graduated from university. It was still rough around the edges, but it had taken shape by the time of my graduation project."

Imanishi's technique involves processing photographs he has taken himself on a computer, reducing them to only dots and lines. He then projects these onto a canvas and paints from there.
The canvas is created using a completely new technique: the first layer is a 1:1 ratio of black and red, the second layer is a 1:1 ratio of black and blue, and the top layer is white. Before it dries completely, the painter uses a brush to scrape away at the layers.

NEXT> Human imagination guides the work to completion