Tomio Koyama Gallery Tokyo - Kyoto | TKG Ceramics | TKG Editions Kyoto

» Introduction:

Shintaro Miyake creates his original world with various expressions such as drawing, sculpture and performance. Typical motif used in his early works is “Sweet-san”, who has a horizontally long face with small feature, a short body and lanky limbs. Depicted not only in drawings, but also in hundreds of “cutouts”, drawings on mounted paper or boards, she gives the viewers sense of happiness with her cuteness. Miyake mainly uses color pencils for drawing as they fit his hands and make him draw naturally. His works have the elements of flatness and repetition, and are sometimes extremely wide like scroll, which suggests the artist’s unlimited imagination.
His performance involves in live drawing wearing the handmade costumes. Miyake, who uses various objects from the familiar to foreign and integrates into his own universe, has made the performance works such as the original character “Innocy”, rabbit and beaver, Minotaur, and octopus. Miyake wanted to make the distance between the artist and the viewer closer, but found most live painting less approachable. Then he came up with this method. It also has the aspect that the character inside of the work makes own portrait, in other words, the artist himself becomes a part of the universe of his work. Physical effects are given to the viewers, and there emerges interactive relation among the artist, the work, and the viewers. This demonstrates that Miyake explores new possibilities in his artistic practice by connecting art and popularity.

» Concept:

This exhibition features Miyake’s new works with his recent themes of “life and death”, “time”, and “reality”. Regarding these themes, Miyake states: “Things always move towards to the end at the same time as they start….If it’s a regular travel, time will continue after you arrive at the final destination. But if it’s a time travel, you will take off from the time itself. And from you consciousness. This is my biggest anxiety as well as the only resolution. But however I think, it is a fact that I have been on the time travel. With joy and sorrows on the train called time.” The new works will not be different visually from his previous works, but what is expressed is the fundamental theme for the artist, namely “how to express self”. The drawing in almost 5 m wide, and cutouts described above will be on view.

» Artist Biography:

Shintaro Miyake was born in 1970, Tokyo. He has graduated from Tama Art University (Department of Fine Art, Painting Department Print Major) in 1996. He lives and works in Tokyo.
_His solo shows include "Innocy's House" (Museum Gugging, Art/Brut Center Gugging、Vienna, 2007), "Beaver no Seikatsu"（Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, 2006）, and group shows include “NO MAN’S LAND” (Ambassade de France, Tokyo, 2009-10) a traveling exhibition "NEOTENY JAPAN　-Takahashi's Collection-" （2008 to 2010）, "Berlin - Tokyo / Tokyo - Berlin"（Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2006）,　and "Naoshima Standard 2"（Naoshima, Kagawa, 2006）. This is his forth solo show with Tomio Koyama Gallery.