MIYA ANDO: Clouds, Sun, Stars

Diehl Gallery

presents

Miya Ando: Clouds, Sun, Stars

08.10.19 - 09.02.19

Artist Reception

08.10.19

5 - 8 PM

 "Wherever you are you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say and more true than you can hear."                                                                                                                                                                                  

 -Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Monk

Miya Ando is an American artist whose metal canvases and sculpture articulate themes of perception and ones relationship to time. Half Japanese &  half Russian-American, Ando is a descendant of Bizen sword makers and spent part of her childhood in a  Buddhist temple in Japan  as well as on 25 acres of redwood forest in rural  coastal Northern California. She has continued her 16th generation Japanese sword smithing and Buddhist lineage by combining metals, reflectivity and light in her  luminous paintings and sculpture.

Living in the rural wilderness of California instilled an awareness and attention to nature and natural materials. This love of elements and natural phenomena was further refined while living in Japan. The foundation of Ando’s practice has been  the transformation and combining of natural elements and utilization of the vernacular of nature. She utilizes vocabulary drawn from the natural world to investigate perception and ones relationship to time. Her focus has been on the transformation of surfaces and the use of elemental materials to create shifting, mutable objects and experiences that change depending upon the light or time of day or viewer’s perspective. Her interest is in creating artworks that allow viewers to experience a relationship to nature and to truly be in the moment as they encounter the transitory qualities of light. Her hope is to draw people into a slowed-down environment with artwork that is experiential and employs the visual vocabulary of natural phenomena and transformation. She utilizes contemporary forms and techniques as well as industrial materials as an examination and harmonizing of the man-made and the natural.

In 2011 she completed two memorial sculptures for 9/11 in which she utilized 30 foot tall pieces of steel which had fallen from the World Trade Center Buildings. Ando’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including a show curated by Guggenheim curator Nat Trotman, the Queens Museum, the De Saisset Museum, The Second Bronx Biennial at the Bronx Museum, The Hermitage Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara satellite space, The Attleboro Arts Museum,  The Museum of Byzantine Culture, The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and the Worcester Museum. Miya’s public commissions include projects in South Korea, Berlin, London, Puerto Rico, New York and California. Her work appears in many important public and private collections and she is the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012, the Thanatopolis Special Artist Award and Public Outdoor Commission Winner and Puffin Foundation Grant winner. A recent critics' picks of ARTFORUM, Ando received her Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and continued her studies at Yale University, in addition to serving as an apprentice to a master metal smith in Japan. Miya’s large scale artwork “Emptiness The Sky” (Shou Sugi Ban) is featured in “Frontiers Reimagined” exhibition in the 56th Venice Biennale. Most recently she was commissioned by The Philip Johnson Glass House to create a sculpture, “Shizen” (Nature) “Kumo” (Cloud) and her work has been acquired for the permanent contemporary collection by The Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA).

This exhibition will benefit