Aichi Triennale 2019

On display are two silkscreen prints, along with records of their production processes. Silkscreen is a printing technique in which areas to be colored on a thin piece of cloth are created by applying an emulsion onto those parts that the ink is not supposed to permeate. The printed patterns are determined by drawing the emulsion directly onto the cloth.
peak 3601 is a work that appears to be made up of stacks of countless little color chips. Through repeated printing while gradually narrowing down the areas to be colored by increasing those treated with emulsion, the artist creates multiple layers of color that eventually form three-dimensional colored objects. The number in the title indicate the number of printing processes in the creation of this work, records of which are displayed on the wall as log, peak.
Based on the design of a mountain map, tsurugi was realized by applying ink in multiple layers along the contour lines, and thereby creating a three-dimensional mountain step by step. The artist chose Mt. Tsurugitake, a mountain that he actually climbed himself, and when looking at the work, one can imagine how it was completed by making one print after another, just like the climber takes one step after another on his way to the peak.
The exhibition includes also reconstructed parts of the artist's atelier, so that visitors can imagine how he makes his own tools for printing thousands of times in order to achieve the thickness of his works, and how he designs such things as the layouts of his working environments. Imamura applies silkscreen, a technique for printing flat surfaces, but here refined into a unique method for the creation of three-dimensional works through operations that are repeated dizzying numbers of times.