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Fumi Imamura "The Warm House -my red flowers-"
Cave-Ayumigallery
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Fumi Imamura
CAVE-AYUMI GALLERY is pleased to present “Warm House ‒ my red flowers‒ ” Fumi Imamuraʼs solo exhibition from March 7, 2026. Curated by Julia Tarasyuk. The exhibition takes shape around Warm House, a series of watercolour collages on paper conceived by Fumi Imamura in 2015 and first exhibited as part of Between Botany and Art at Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan. Presented as a single installation the original work consisted of thirty paintings intended to fill an entire wall. At the time the choice of red flowers carried no symbolic meaning. “I simply wanted to paint red flowers,” Imamura recalls. “There was no particular reason beyond that.” What emerged was a dense, repetitive, and immersive visual field that felt like an imaginary space rather than an image of nature.
As the works were arranged together branching stems and roots began to resemble internal organs or capillaries. The installation evoked the sensation of being inside a body: enclosed, suspended, held.
This understanding of painting as an interior, as a structure that contains what cannot always be consciously named, lies at the core of Warm House and the artist’s practice. Rather than offering a specific narrative or symbolic reading Warm House proposes an inner architecture: a container that remains open and resistant to fixed interpretation.
Imamura has long felt an affinity with the ideas of the Japanese anatomist and philosopher Shigeo Miki who suggested that the mind does not reside in the brain but in the viscera. These ideas have been an important point of departure for Imamura but her thinking has since continued to move and expand through her work. In her recent practice the location of the mind is not fixed. It is neither confined to the organs nor fully contained within the body. Instead it appears to circulate, extending outward, shaped by relation, touch, and proximity.
Originally conceived as a thirty-part work Warm House remained unresolved for many years. Imamura later realised that the even number disrupted the sense of wholeness she sought. A decade later the work is presented here as a thirty-five-part installation shown alongside more than twenty new works that expand its concerns and extend them into the wider space of the gallery. These recent paintings do not repeat the original series, rather they open the conversation further allowing viewers’ perception to engage with them across multiple levels. Warm House has also taken on a life beyond the gallery. Selected works from the series were recently used in Imamura’s collaboration with tao for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Documentation of this collaboration is included in the exhibition tracing how the works translate into the language of the body, movement, and dress.
Created after Imamura became a mother in 2023, the new works reflect a subtle but significant shift in perspective. What once functioned as a protective outer shell now opens from within. When she holds something warm, she feels herself becoming warm. In this expanded body of work the house is not a metaphor for comfort nor a fixed site of belonging but a physical structure through which the boundaries between inside and outside quietly begin to soften.
As the works were arranged together branching stems and roots began to resemble internal organs or capillaries. The installation evoked the sensation of being inside a body: enclosed, suspended, held.
This understanding of painting as an interior, as a structure that contains what cannot always be consciously named, lies at the core of Warm House and the artist’s practice. Rather than offering a specific narrative or symbolic reading Warm House proposes an inner architecture: a container that remains open and resistant to fixed interpretation.
Imamura has long felt an affinity with the ideas of the Japanese anatomist and philosopher Shigeo Miki who suggested that the mind does not reside in the brain but in the viscera. These ideas have been an important point of departure for Imamura but her thinking has since continued to move and expand through her work. In her recent practice the location of the mind is not fixed. It is neither confined to the organs nor fully contained within the body. Instead it appears to circulate, extending outward, shaped by relation, touch, and proximity.
Originally conceived as a thirty-part work Warm House remained unresolved for many years. Imamura later realised that the even number disrupted the sense of wholeness she sought. A decade later the work is presented here as a thirty-five-part installation shown alongside more than twenty new works that expand its concerns and extend them into the wider space of the gallery. These recent paintings do not repeat the original series, rather they open the conversation further allowing viewers’ perception to engage with them across multiple levels. Warm House has also taken on a life beyond the gallery. Selected works from the series were recently used in Imamura’s collaboration with tao for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Documentation of this collaboration is included in the exhibition tracing how the works translate into the language of the body, movement, and dress.
Created after Imamura became a mother in 2023, the new works reflect a subtle but significant shift in perspective. What once functioned as a protective outer shell now opens from within. When she holds something warm, she feels herself becoming warm. In this expanded body of work the house is not a metaphor for comfort nor a fixed site of belonging but a physical structure through which the boundaries between inside and outside quietly begin to soften.
Schedule | Mar 7 (Sat) 2026-Apr 12 (Sun) 2026 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://caveayumigallery.tokyo/FumiImamura_TheWarmHouse_release_2026 | ||||
| Venue | Cave-Ayumigallery https://caveayumigallery.tokyo | ||||
| Location | B2F Takahashi Bldg., 114 Yarai-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0805 | ||||
| Access | 2 minute walk from exit 1 at Kagurazaka Station on the Tozai line, 7 minute walk from exit A3 at Ushigome-kagurazaka Station on the Toei Oedo line. | ||||
| Phone | 03-3269-1202 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it  |
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