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| The artist with one of his river installations, 2001 |
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Yuji Miyao was born in Nagano and still does most of his work in a studio he built on his family's land there. He also spends a good part of the year in Tokyo, but his work receives greater recognition overseas. Ever since an expedition in search of pigments led him to Spain in the late 1990s, he has gained his largest following there, exhibiting and working nearly every year in places like Barcelona and Mallorca.
Miyao has developed a unique set of techniques and materials that allow for a large quotient of chance in his compositions. Until about ten years ago he painted abstract oils, but a search for a different, less "controlled" approach led to the discovery that soaking layers of paper with pigments dissolved in resin produced fascinating and often uncontrollable results. He also tried embedding plants and twigs amid the paper layers, evoking abstract but very natural-looking landscapes.
Miyao also discovered that the resin made his works impervious to water and began creating large installations of resin and pigment on a nonwoven, paper-like fabric for hanging in public spaces or floating on rivers.
Looking for a source of less expensive pigments than the lovely but pricey powders of Nihonga, Miyao found what he wanted in Spain. On his first trips there he met and befriended artists and gallery owners in Barcelona, and this led to a series of exhibitions and residencies there and on the island of Mallorca.
Yet Miyao's inventive work rarely gets public exposure in Tokyo. A recent exception was a one-week show at Gallery Space Q, a tiny basement space with a Ginza address, but far from the upscale galleries that line the main avenues of that district. Kazuko Sashida, the owner of Space Q, opened it last fall after several years of producing art events around town.
This tiny but promising foothold in the Ginza notwithstanding, in Japan Miyao's art is on view most frequently in regional capitals like Fukushima and Sapporo as well as his home turf in Nagano. Fortunately for Tokyoites, however, Sashida says she plans to show Miyao's work every year around the same time, in June or July.
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above: Time of the Sun, The Shade of Time (mixed media on canvas, 130 x 162 cm, 2006)
below: Indoor installation for a dance performance, 2002
All images © Yuji Miyao
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