KAWAI Akio

KAWAI Akio began producing works on the theme of plants from the 1970s. In 1979 he received the Japan Art Festival Excellence Award. Ever since, he has continued to pursue plant-like means of expression, creating a series of paintings that convey only the traces of the layers of paint applied to the surface through employing colors of paint that are as close as possible to the base color of the support medium. From 1992 to 2002, he organized the project "Nozumi" in a depopulated village in Japan’s Hokuriku region, presenting installations in abandoned houses and works using plants themselves as mediums for expression with intentions of "re-questioning the relationship between expression and place." In the 2000s he began collecting agave（Succulents inhabiting arid areas in Central America） and came to be recognized as a global collector, leading him to produce an installation incorporating agave in 2017.
His major exhibitions include, "Undying Life" 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2017), "Invisible Akio Kawai" Minokamo Civic Museum (Gifu, 2010), "The Power of Greenery: Plant Expression in Modern Japanese Painting" Gunma Prefectural Tatebayashi Museum of Art (2003), and "Contemporary Paintings: Eastern Europe and Japan" National Museum of Art (Osaka, 1981).
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