Miya Ando: Clouds: Noguchi Museum, Queens, NY
The Noguchi Museum presents Miya Ando: Clouds, an installation of two site-specific sculptures in the Museum’s indoor-outdoor gallery. The works, suspended plate-glass sculptures internally etched with images of clouds, share Isamu Noguchi’s interest in sculpting ephemeral materials, and in using them to shape space.
Raised in a Buddhist temple by the sea in Okayama, Japan, and on 25-acres of redwood forest in coastal Northern California, artist Miya Ando has always been drawn to the immaterial quality of fog and clouds. She began creating images of clouds in glass cubes and slabs in 2011. Pushing the limits of commercial laser etching technology from the outset, she started small. By collaborating with a highly specialized factory, she has been able to gradually enlarge them. The two examples for the Museum, the first she has decided to hang—Haku-Un (White Cloud) 4.8.1, the largest to date, and Haku-Un (White Cloud) 3.3.1—take the work in a new, more environmental direction.
The pairing of her clouds with Noguchi’s large basalt sculptures was inspired by a Japanese zengo (or Zen phrase): “Blue mountain does not move. White cloud comes and goes naturally.” Although the etched image of clouds in the glass is static, the surface of the glass seems to move, as it mirrors changes in the environment.
Meanwhile, the clouds shift in and out of sight as viewers walk around them. Seeming to expand and collapse in the charged landscape of the Museum’s indoor-outdoor gallery (Area 1), they are a conceptual and perceptual analogue for Noguchi’s collapsible Akari light sculptures—the subject of the Museum’s current exhibition Akari: Sculpture by Other Means.
About Miya Ando
Miya Ando is based in New York City and Los Angeles. Her work has been the subject of international solo exhibitions including at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design), Savannah, GA; Shibuya Seibu, Tokyo, Japan; Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY; and Lesley Kehoe Galleries, Melbourne, Australia. Her art has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Bronx Museum, New York, NY; and Queens Museum of Art, New York, NY. Her work is included in the collections of LACMA and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI, as well as in numerous private collections. Ando has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award and Commission for The Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, CT.
