Tokyo Gallery + BTAP is pleased to announce "Metathesis", a solo exhibition by Danshaku Miyazawa, starting on January 17 (Saturday).

Danshaku Miyazawa was born in 1981 in Chiba. He was selected for the Tokyo Wonder Wall award in 2004, and has held the two-man exhibition "comings and goings" with Nozomi Kobayashi in 2008, and the solo exhibition "in mid air" in 2010 at Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Tokyo), as well as the solo exhibition "comings and goings" in 2011 in BTAP in Beijing. This is his first solo show in five years in Japan, and will showcase a series of works that use thin washi, or Japanese paper, and new sculptural works made of clay.

In the past, Miyazawa has mainly worked on drawings with pencils and ballpoint pens, but in recent years, he has introduced various other materials and supporting mediums including watercolors, oil paints, clay, and others. The human figures that appear in his works float adrift within the picture plane while relying on the tenuous material for their existence, as if to allude to the uncertainty of the self in contemporary society. In the series presented in this show painted on washi, the artist portrays people employing accidental stretches of color that are generated through the interaction between the supporting medium and watercolors. The technique which comprises tearing up paper and twisting it into a string, or superimposing different layers of washi, brings the characteristic of the material to the fore, and is highly representative of the experimental aspect of the Miyazawa's artistic production.

The title "Metathesis" references Taikan Yokoyama's work Metempsychosis. The exhibition evokes a continuation between Taikan's traditional sense of impermanence and the current social conditions that become increasingly virtual due to developments in transportation and communication. Miyazawa's works bespeak of the fact that he is an artist who continues to live and work in contemporary Japan.