Set across the ground floor and first floor of a mansion built in 1900, Miyanaga Aiko’s first solo exhibition in France, 1900-2025 : Breath of light, will be on display at Le Clézio Gallery from February 6th, 2025.
“When I happened to glance inside the apple crates stacked in my family’s workshop since I was a child, I found plaster moulds neatly organised with pieces of tape: “Rabbit, incomplete body,” “Sleeping tiger, tail,”“Cat, earless” … These names are traces of years of careful sorting by my father, brother, and those who researched the Tozan Kiln.
These Sèvres-style plaster moulds were made by my great-grandfather, the first-generation Miyanaga Tozan, with the ceramic sculptor Numata Ichiga. In the empty spaces resting within these white masses, the spirit, passion, dreams, and aspirations of that time overlap. I tried pouring glass inside, as though breathing new life into the hollows. It seemed like a way of visiting the past, and yet, the weight of the glass made me feel as though the past itself had come to greet me.
I know very little about what Paris was like in 1900, when my great-grandfather spent time here before becoming a potter. But walking through the city, imagining how he felt as he experienced the dawn of a new century here, I am excited to see the Parisian landscape reflected in the glass holding the air of today. The absent forms that have long lain dormant in Kyoto are now, in Paris, tied together—past, present, and future.” – Miyanaga Aiko
Date: Thursday 6 February – Sunday 6 April 2025
Opening Hours: 11:00-19:00
Closed: Monday, Tuesday
Venue: Le Clézio Gallery, 157 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, France
https://www.lecleziogallery.com/exhibitions/6-1900-2025-breath-of-light-aiko-miyanaga/overview/
