Shino Miura “Shino’s World”
Gallery Juno
This event has ended.
Gallery Juno presents a solo exhibition of mixed-media based works on paper by artist Shino Miura. Born in 1987, Shino suffered a brain injury during infancy that stunted her mental growth, leaving her unable to communicate through spoken or written language.
“My daughter, Shino, cannot speak, cannot write, cannot read. With regard to her inner thoughts, I can only answer with my own words and my own thoughts. I have long been concerned about how much I can speak for her. I have always stopped myself from deciding for her. But as I grow older, I’ve decided to worry less about the details. If there is hesitation, I won’t do it. But once it’s begun, I want to see it through.”
“This is a path that I could not have travelled on my own. To everyone who has helped along the way I offer my sincerest gratitude. Because you were around, I could live.”
- Shino’s mother, Tomoko Miura
This series of exuberant paintings and drawings are a testament to the vitality of the human spirit and the power of art. Unable to speak, Shino naturally turns to the vocabulary of gesture, form and color to communicate what she is physically unable to express. Her work attempts to synthesize an elemental visual language of pure feeling… addressing concerns of self-realization, the transmission of idea and emotion, and the nature of expression through abstraction.
Shino’s work, utilizing crayon, pastel, acrylic paint and printmaking, is undeniably visceral and primal, and contains that spark of human creativity - of life, really - that seems to will her thoughts, her personality, to physical form. In these “all-over” paintings and drawings, there are moments of explosive energy, like fireworks. Bold, vivid, and alive with intense, radiant color. Yet they are not unrestrained. There is also often a strongly defined sense of control, order, rhythm, and uniform balance.
Floating, weightless orbs of softly pulsating color are repeated within a structured grid. Slashing, scratching gestural marks undulate rhythmically across the picture plane. Rapid flicks and flitters of the brush dance and weave uniformly from edge to edge, creating vibrating textural surfaces that resonate upon the viewer’s eye. Smears and smudges of pigment produce a kind of song, a patchwork of colorful notes that harmonize into a singular, ringing statement; the traces of her fingertips etched into the paint, the echo of her voice.
In Shino’s world there is always a powerfully clear voice. The work speaks for itself, and, through it, Shino speaks for herself.
Shino Miura lives and works in Hiroshima, Japan.
Media
Schedule
from April 17, 2015 to May 01, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-04-17 from 18:00 to 20:00