Opening Reception for Miya Ando: Kumoji (Cloud Path / A Road Traversed By Birds And The Moon)

Kavi Gupta presents Kumoji (Cloud Path / A Road Traversed By Birds And The Moon), a solo exhibition of new paintings by Miya Ando. Expressive of the transitory and immaterial quality of clouds at night, the exhibition spotlights nature’s impermanence and interdependence, concepts also prevalent in Ando’s recent solo exhibitions at the Noguchi Museum, Queens, NY; Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC; and Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, TX; and her recent group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (with Marina Abramović, Marilyn Minter, Ólafur Eliasson, and Ai Weiwei); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Ando lived her formative years between a Buddhist temple in Japan and the mountains of Northern California. The unique vantage point expressed in Kumoji (Cloud Path / A Road Traversed By Birds And The Moon) reflects her experiences as an artist occupying the margins between Japanese and Western culture.

Ando’s circular night cloud paintings read like memories—never static, fluctuating endlessly depending on the position of the viewer and the available light. Based on actual night clouds Ando photographed in a variety of locations over the past three years, their ephemeral qualities illustrate the sentiment behind the Japanese phrase “mono no aware,” roughly translated as “the pathos of things.” Beauty fades; strength dissolves into frailty. Everything follows this rule; it is the vernacular of nature. 

“Something becomes more beautiful and sublime the more impermanent it is,” Ando says. “There’s a psychological shift that occurs when one recognizes the pathos of falling cherry blossoms, or the moon going through phases, or a passing cloud.”