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Ippodo Gallery debuts at Independent 20th Century alongside Japan’s leading living painter Masaaki Miyasako and 9 fellow contemporary Japanese artists of diverse mediums all working to innovate traditional techniques. Set in the Riverside Special Exhibition Room overlooking Manhattan’s Upper Bay, VOYAGE BLUE is an invitation to embark on an odyssey in Japanese culture. VOYAGE BLUE introduces fairgoers to new design perspectives while remaining deeply rooted in the traditions of earth-wrought materials paramount to Japanese sensibilities.
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Masaaki Miyasako
Firework 'Aqua' - Eternal Moment - 水花火, 2023The centerpiece of the exhibition and Miyasako’s signature, Firework ‘Aqua’ is a vivid memory of the Go-no River in his hometown in Shimane prefecture, Japan. The cast net—which fans out in perpetuity—is an auspicious symbol of luck, fortune, and prosperity. Two versions of the fisherman's cast net are in the public collections of the Prime Minister of Japan to embody these ideals. The scene, which Miyasako realizes from his mind's eye; combines his unique urazaishiki method and multi-point perspective to reimagine time as fluid. Though the underside of the boat may be visible, the fisherman's face hides beneath his hat and the net expands forward in contradiction to the person's body language. These asynchronous elements create a dynamic and complex interwoven composition of rolling waves and laced netting that is timeless.
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Masaaki Miyasako is renowned for his revival of the thousand-year-old Japanese painting technique urazaishiki . He begins by allowing three sheets of white kozo-washi paper to age a decade, becoming transparent. His specialty-made brushes of white cat hair and martin are the key to his approach. The hairs are set into the handle in a sprial to hold the hand-dyed liquid pigment. Miyasako's vivid colors derive from a variety of rare and precious materials, including coral, malachite, azurite, vermillion, sumi charcoal, and many others. The spiral is Miyasako’s method of establishing composition; working from the center outwards, each dot in his pointillism technique gradually accumulates until the image emerges as an ensemble. The hallmark of urazaishiki is back-painting; rather than apply each dot to the front-facing surface, the painting is made on the reverse side and is seen through the layered transparent sheets of kozo-washi a gainst a backdrop of textured momigami paper.
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Featured Artists
