March 3, 2021

A year of Covid has now passed. What has changed?

1) Everything is online.

2) We don’t shake hands any more

3) Public transport- option of last resort

4) If it’s a choice between hard pants and soft pants, I choose soft.

5) I miss lipstick.

It is is only two months until the show at Zurcher Gallery. Really looking forward to meeting the other artists.

This show is currently on at Zurcher:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/arts/design/4-art-gallery-shows-to-see-right-now.html?smid=url-share

by Will Heinrich for the New York Times

ImageInstallation view of “Kazuko Miyamoto in Sol LeWitt's Collection,” curated by Barbara Stehle, at Zürcher Gallery.Credit...Zürcher Gallery, New York/Paris

The artist Kazuko Miyamoto began her career as a Minimalist. In the 1970s, she made spare abstract paintings and geometric, modular sculptures before shifting to a series called “String Constructions,” which consisted of taut lines of string stretched between nails in the wall and on the floor. They were solid but ethereal, drawings in space that seemed to shift as you moved around them.

Then, in 1983, Miyamoto had a solo show at A.I.R. Gallery in New York that looked entirely different. The sculptures were made from twigs and twisted brown paper, and many took recognizable forms, like handmade ladders and two big nests placed at opposite ends of the room. She maintained material simplicity but channeled it into oversized, pointedly handmade objects that evoked people carrying out rituals or at play. She used many of them as costume pieces or props in performances. The exhibition represented a turning point, when she ditched the strictures of Minimalism and embraced a bodily presence that had already been lurking in her art.

The artist Sol LeWitt, who was both her friend and employer, bought many of those sculptures, which have been mostly in storage until now. On view in “Kazuko Miyamoto in Sol LeWitt’s Collection,” they haven’t lost their power: They remain animated and bewitching in their simplicity. The curator, Barbara Stehle, has rounded out the presentation with several string pieces, which show where Miyamoto was coming from, and a selection of work about kimonos, which demonstrate where she was going. It’s a compelling mini-survey of an artist who deserves a more expansive look.