Press Release

GALLERY MoMo Projects

2F 6-2-6 Roppongi Minato-ku Tokyo 160-0032 Japan

The Way of Drawing – Amy Myers, Hideyuki Nagasawa and Mireya Samper

December 13(Sat), 2014 – January 24 (Sat), 2015

GALLERY MoMo Projects is pleased to present a group show titled “The Way of Drawing” from December 13th through January 24th. The group exhibiting will highlight drawings by three artists: Amy Myers, Hideyuki Nagasawa and Mireya Samper. Beyond the different field and diverse cultural backgrounds, we can find out similarities and differences through their works.

 

Amy Myers, living and working at New York, has influenced by her farther, a physicist, and been interested in Newtonian Physics and Quantum Mechanical Theory since she was a child. As a result, she continues drawing inspired by these themes. The ethereal and complex lines like digital graphics are drawn freehand and show the quality of her drawing skills. By having dialogues between the work and the paper, she adds a sheet of paper one by one. Like answering the inquiry of the work asking to the artist, she puts another new paper on. The seams between the papers are a system of latitude and longitude to help her deal with issues of symmetrical gentle detailed lines. The motifs drew on the symmetry seem like the traces of the rotation in space or the female wombs.

 

Hideyuki Nagasawa who mainly works with oil panting will exhibit watercolor series inspired by Hasushitae Hyakunin Isshu Wakakan, known as a masterpiece of Edo period created by Soutatsu Tawaraya and Kouetsu Honami. In this drawing series, Nagasawa uses the dots in the same way of painting like his Membrance series and Painting on Painting series. The dots with watercolor blur spreading on a paper that oil paintings cannot produce. By employing the dimension sense of the vague and the definite, his drawings express mutual subtle involvement between depth and surface.

 

Mireya Samper, from Iceland, participates in many projects of Artist-in-residence all over the world and creates site-specific works using local and regional produced materials in each country. In Japan, she made art works linked to environmental issues using local nature when she took part in the Abiko International Open-Air Art Exhibition in Chiba and the Art Islands in Tokyo, in Izu Ooshima. Samper Mireya works equally into 2 and 3 dimensional forms. In this group, she will exhibit drawings by ink and crayon on Japanese paper and stones carving surface in water drop shape. Her intuitional lines on Japanese paper provoke the greatness of mountains and the tempestuous of nature. The work reminds us the natural threats and the stillness that many Japanese felt when they saw the news Mount Ontake erupt on September 27 2014, which killed 57 people. The shapes of water drops on stones express tears, a symbol of infinity and the eternity of nature.

This group show will introduce the uniqueness of the drawings of these three artists from different background expressing in various ways.

 

Amy Myers 

Amy Myers is NY-based artist primarily makes drawings on paper. After received MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999, the artist had the solo exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery in 2001 and at Mike Weiss Gallery in New York City in 2006 and 2008. She also has shown at museums across the United States such as Manhattan Beach Cultural Arts Center (CA), Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center (GA), and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS). Her works are in the collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (NY), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Museum of Fine Arts (TX), and American Express Corporate Collection.

 

Hideyuki Nagasawa

Hideyuki Nagasawa was born in 1947 in Saitama, Japan and graduated from Musashino Art University in 1972. After working at film production, Nagasawa started his career as an artist in 1979. He has been active in new theme and techniques and constantly has showed at the gallery. The works of Nagasawa are in the collection of museums: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, SEZON MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, OHARA MUSEUM OF ART, Kawagoe City Art Museum and so many other museums. He has been passionate about the development of young artists at Musashino Art University. Recently, he organized an exhibition themed Godzilla collaborating with the students at Kawagoe City Museum. This exhibition suggested the problems of nuclear energy and the lack of imagination in the society received positive reviews and succeeded to re-exhibit at Maruki Art Museum as tiled Daigo Fukuryu Maru Godzilla 1954→2014.

 

Mireya Samper

Mireya Samper was born in Iceland and studied at The Art and Craft school of Iceland. After graduating from Ecole d’Art De Luminy in France in 1993, she has widened her appeal internationally by attending residency programs. She previously exhibited at Gerðarsafn Art Museum of Kópavogur in Iceland and M.K.Ciurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas, Lithuania. In addition, she joined in many exhibitions in Germany, France, Greece and Japan. Mireya works in a variety of materials depending on the idea they serve and the context. Mireya is also founder, CEO and artistic director of the International Art Biennale Fresh Winds

 

MIREYA SAMPER solo exhibition VASTNESS  at ano ano galerie 

Desember 6^th – 20^th 2014

Mon-sat 15:00-20:00 / sun & holiday 11:00-18:00

Opening reception December 6^th at 15:00

Whispering Blue

 

The world has been filled with blue, I found

Clear water turns into blue

A drop of water becomes the stream and pours into the sea

 

Pure and quite

Simple and cool

Divine and sad

 

Through the earth, the land and into the body, travels the blue

The infinite journey from the ancient

Gentle melody woven by water and light

 

The whispering blue, I hear

 

The impression when I saw the “Vastness” by Mireya Samper for the first time was this; the air around her work seems to be gradually purified and I feel as if my whole body turned into clear blue. Her original scenery, Iceland seem to overflow out of it. The volcano is as active as ever, the wind across the land and water is clear as well. The tiny island country filled with unworldly pure air enjoys being transended. Still, there is a peculiar similarity with Japan.

“Vastness” or being vast, calls back a kind of image of the cosmos, then sublimate her work into legend. There is the sacred place, urging us to talk with our inner universe.

Now, at the beginning of winter, to find yourself left in the memory, why don’t you step into the trip to legend?

 

Art Symposium

Ano ano art galerie aims at developing young artists who hold the coming generation. They are planning to hold symposium with the solo exhibition of Mireya Samper.

Samper has had solo exhibition in Iceland, India, Lithuania and France and participated in group exhibiitons in Japan, India, Austria, Hungary, France, Mauritius, Chile, Germany and Iceland.  At the symposium they will inquire into the history and culture of Ieland and try to lighten a piece of her cosmology. They imagine to find a clue in her repeated themes such as water, light and the infinite in her original scenery.

 

ano ano galerie

2-37-11 Minami Otsuka, Toshima-ku

Tokyo JPN 170-0005

Tel: 03-6318-8532

Fax: 03-3942-7966