Masako Miki’s paintings, sculptures, and installations blur the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. Using a variety of materials, including wool, wood, bronze, ink, and watercolor, Miki creates characterful artworks rooted in the Indigenous culture of her Japanese birthplace but informed by the freedom and ambition of three decades of living in California. Integral to Miki’s practice are handmade wool-felt sculptures that could be trees, chestnuts, waterdrops, mochi treats, or the physical manifestations of sounds. Simultaneously organic and architectural, these works are distinguished by an absence of right angles and other rectilinear forms that might imprison or confine. The characters are all “shapeshifters” who metamorphose and foster change.
Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan) has enjoyed solo shows and projects at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; ICA San José; and KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville. Her work is currently on view in the two-person exhibition titled (Super)Natural: Paul Klee and Masako Miki at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Her work is in the permanent collections of SFMOMA; the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts; Collección SOLO, Madrid; and Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, New York, among others.
[excerpted from Jessica Silverman Gallery website: www.jessicasilvermangallery.com]