ABOUT Minoru Inoue

Minoru Inoue was born in 1970. He majored in painting at Tokyo Zokei University, but dropped out and went to France. After returning to Japan, he has continued to create paintings consistently.

Inoue’s earnest attitude toward painting is directly reflected in his works. His motifs, which are usually found everywhere, such as grass, dead plants and insects in a planter placed on a balcony and left unattended, are not obnoxious and even sublime.
This is the result of his elimination of "intention" as much as possible and his concentration on "painting" instead of "making" pictures.

In his 20s, Inoue was bound by "contemporary art" and struggled to make it his own, but it did not work out, and he says he always felt uncomfortable. He says that when he abandoned his "intention" to "create" and concentrated only on "drawing," he felt a response for the first time. Since then, he has continued to explore his own paintings through further twists and turns.

Although Inoue says he has moved away from "contemporary art," the image of the master artist of a century ago has become less and less common, and the artist’s subjectivity in his works has been dismantled. In this sense, Inoue’s paintings can be said to be very contemporary.