Kei Imazu - till Nov 15

Imazu's canvases are glaring, giddy, and understatedly weird

Japanese shows are in short supply – especially compared to their Korean and Indian counterparts – in a city that has claimed aspirations to become Asia’s main art hub.

Noda is one of the few galleries in Beijing that is bringing Japanese artists to the forefront. The gallery also plans to show Chinese artists at their home space in Nagoya. Kei Imazu is just under 30. His canvases are glaring and giddy, and on the whole, too busy.

The paintings still blend a confident brush technique with a healthy and exuberant naivety. The result is that you feel the artist is not overly congealed in his practice.

Bright and crammed with objects, the paintings overwhelm. Their colour palette and quality of light are also immediately recognisable as coming from a Japanese artist.

Sunlight, often in the form of transparent gumballs, floats through the air, and lends much of this show an anime quality. But what makes the exhibition resonate is its odd mixture of Japanese sensibility and Western subjects.

Many, not all, of the subjects are blonde-headed kids that seem to have come straight from a Norman Rockwell calendar. They stand or float in a variety of distorted backgrounds: supermarket aisles, fields, shacks, swimming pools, junkyards and skyscrapers.

It’s like Iowa cornfield meets downtown Tokyo, and this strange sense of disconnect is disturbing, even if we sense that the artist is never trying to shock. The children appear so disjointed from their landscape, they might pop off the wall and start skipping nonchalantly around the gallery.

They don’t need knives or masks. Their quirky smiles are creepy enough. Even if in the end they come off more as awkward misfits rather than aggressive predators, their understated weirdness sets this work – and Kei Imazu – a notch above the ordinary. Stacey Duff