The Gotoh Cultural Award Homecoming Commemorative Exhibition "House" by MIYANAGA Aiko（TOKYO）

Mizuma Art Gallery is pleased to present “house”, MIYANAGA Aiko’s exhibition in celebration of the artist’s return from her trip founded by the Goth Cultural Foundation.

Last year, Miyanaga’s magnificent artworks exhibited at the National Museum of Art, Osaka received a tremendous response. The present exhibition, her first since then, will be composed of the symbolic naphthalene chair shown in Osaka which is displayed for the first time in the Tokyo area, along with new works. 

After winning the 2011 Gotoh Cultural Awardthe New Artist Award, Miyanaga departed on a journey to discover landscapes on the other side of the planet, far from her native Japan. She based herself in the United States and traveled to Central and South America where she discovered entirely new sceneries. A forest of fossilized trees. Deserts of salt lakes and white gypsum stretches shaped by the sea for aeons. Stratums, evidence of the passing of time at the surface of the earth. People assembling from every corner of the planet at the 5000 meter high ALMA observatory, fascinated by the billions and billions of light years of space lying ahead. 

But Miyanaga didn’t feel any sense of sudden oddness and isolation towards those “unseen panoramas”. On the contrary, she thought of them as proofs that the universe ceaselessly changes to find its balance. She felt they connected with, and juxtaposed the landscapes around us, how distant from Japan they may be.

Miyanaga’s art works draw a supple strength from the landscapes she saw during her journey. “beginning of landscapes” is the collection of pruned leaves from fragrant olive trees, one of the most common varieties in Japan. Everyday objects cast in naphthalene, her most representative pieces, gradually change to crystals. Glazed bowls trying to balance crack and produce high pitched sounds… Miyanaga crystallizes bits of our ever-changing universe and reveals it to us.

When one looks through a leaf smaller than their palm, they can see the bird’s-eye view of a gigantic map. Miyanaga thinks of the universe as being present in all the small things of the everyday. For each and everyone of us, our “house” is the most familiar landscape. Back from the farthest of lands, here crystallized in our everyday are the artist’s works. From here we might find the key to the landscapes continuing in front of us.