MISA SHIN GALLERY is proud to announce the exhibition of Yasuko Iba’s Paintings from Friday, June 1 through Saturday, July 14.

Iba is a painter known for works which appeal to the viewer’s five senses by teasing out on canvas the texture, light and physical presence in space of everyday objects like cushions and tableware.

Born in 1967 in Kyoto, Iba began working as painter in the early 1990’s. A unifying thread in her work has been a process in which she takes photographs of everyday physical objects, enlarging them, and converting these works into pictures upon canvas. At first glance, they look extremely real. Upon closer inspection however, abstract elements like blurred edges come to the fore, and there are even turns of the brush on the surface of the canvas that reveal where the artist seems to have struggled with the work.

The upcoming show, her first solo exhibition at MISA SHIN GALLERY, represents a bold new departure for Iba, who had expressed the desire to paint landscapes. The seven new oil paintings that form the main attraction of the exhibition, use her crockery motif to experiment with a new kind of visual expression. Her new method blurs the outlines of the patterns we have seen her paint up until now, and teases out the light to make it more prominent, causing us to feel as if it almost had been pasted on.

Iba refers to Shunso Hishida (an innovative painter of the Meiji Era) and his approach to painting landscape: “In Hishida’s Rakuyo (literally, “fallen leaves”), we are moved by the depth and distance we discover in a completely blank part of the picture in which nothing is actually drawn. We are drawn in by the sight of the interwoven trees covered in moss, and the feeling that these actually exist someplace other than just within the painting. I myself want to articulate textures and a sense of space based on the patterns and light that are used as elements when one puts together a landscape painting.”

When we talk about appreciating the charm of a piece of ceramics or a vessel in Japanese, we use the word keshiki (“scenery” or “vista”). In Iba’s new works, the surface seen through the glaze becomes ambiguous through the light reflected off of it, giving us the feeling that we can actually discern some place between the “scenery” that is near to us, as opposed to that which is further away.

This directly appeals not only to the way we have heretofore looked at things, but it also becomes an encouragement to more actively delve into the picture in front of us.

We look forward to your discovery of Yasuko Iba’s new ventures into uncharted territory.

About the Artist:

Kyoto Saga University of Arts, postgraduate degree in print. Lived and worked in Monflaquin, France in 1999 on a scholarship from Art Scope Daimier Chrysler Japan; and in New York 2001-02 on the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs Oversees Study Abroad Program for Artists. She has exhibited extensively, including a solo show in at the Museum of Art Kamakura (2009), and at the National Art Center Tokyo’s Domani group show (2009). Her work is part of many public collections, such as at places like The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura; Shiseido Art House; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.