Mio Kaneda
Solo Exhibition
Whirlwind in My Ear
2024.12.14 (Sat.) - 2025.1.18 (Sat.)
Opening hours：12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and holidays
*In conjunction with Yosuke Takayama Solo Exhibition Return
*Gallery will be closed from December 29, 2024 to January 6, 2025 for winter holiday
Opening reception: 14 December (Sat.), 2024, 17:00 – 19:00
* The artist will be present at the reception.
Time to spend with the artists and their works: January 11 (Sat.), 2025, 15:00 – 18:00
We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce Whirlwind in My Ear, the upcoming solo exhibition of works by Mio Kaneda. The exhibition will run from December 14 (Sat.), 2024 to January 18 (Sat.), 2025.
Mio Kaneda began her career as an artist by making prints in the second half of the 1980s. Subsequently, she widened her range of production, which centers on oil paintings using paper as the supporting medium, and continued to paint while incorporating modes of expression using various materials such as water-soluble crayon and charcoal. In addition to scenes in her surroundings and little everyday happenings, she sensitively captures even invisible phenomena such as light, temperature, humidity, air, sound, and feelings present there. She then affixes them to the surface of the supporting medium with organic lines and forms, and with carefully overlaid coloring. While giving us visual pleasure, her works at the same time quietly summon and awaken various images hidden in our hearts. This solo exhibition, Kaneda’s first at ANOMALY, will display about 10 pieces consisting of canvases and large works on paper that she made from 2023 to 2024 based on inspirations in everyday life.
Whirlwind in My Ear, the title of this exhibition, derives from a striking incident that Kaneda recently experienced. During a walk near dawn, there was a moment when she felt a form of wind like a strong whirlwind blowing in her ear. She said that, through this strange experience, the power of natural phenomena such as climate change and natural disasters occurring somewhere on earth every day was linked with the image that welled up inside her.
Regarding her own paintings, Kaneda says that she thinks of three relationships: “entities that cannot be seen but are sure, entities that are visible, and entities appearing on paintings.” Her production is the task of overlaying things that are visible, things felt by the whole body, and things imagined by the mind. For example, it can be seen that Orange Explosion, a large-scale painting on paper to be shown in this exhibition, takes flames as its motif. In addition, the invisible yet surely existing temperature appears as an entity that is more clearly felt in the darkness, due to Kaneda’s subtle coloring and brushwork. It may be added that there are a number of star-like shapes that are signature motifs often appearing in Kaneda’s works. Their unrealistic forms suddenly popping up are scattered among the realistic motifs, creating a tension and unique interest that only a painting could have.
Orange Explosion (2023) Oil on paper, H145xW151.5cm ©︎Mio Kaneda
In Kaneda’s recent works, motifs that can actually be perceived seem to have become more numerous. This presumably derives from a deeper consciousness of the relationship of conflict between the materiality of pigment, brush texture, and the artist’s touch on the one hand, and the image of the intended subject of depiction on the other, as opposed to a placement of precedence on one or the other. For Kaneda, to paint is to constantly think; her works are crystallizations of her many-layered thought and practice. Standing before them, perhaps we can get a glimpse of a part of a fresh and beautiful world we ordinarily overlook. We are hope to seeing you at this exhibition of new works by Mio Kaneda, whose work continues to evolve.
The Pawnee tribe of North American Indians make an invocation when stepping into a river. This “invocation to the wind” is reportedly “divided into several parts, which correspond, respectively, to the moment when the travellers put their feet in water, the moment when they move them and the moment when the water completely covers their feet.”* The invocation separates the moment when only the wet parts of the body feel cool. In this way, they pray to confirm the natural order and pay attention in order cross the river safely and live.
I read the description of this invocation, and thought of the difference in coldness. The three types of coldness indicate real situations that appeal to experience, and the differences between them are clearly conveyed. Besides indicating knowledge of nature, these types of coldness could even be termed poetic. Although they could become literature and words coloring records depending on the case, they are poignant and realistic expressions of states just as they are, and above all, needed by the people living in that land.
Could I manifest expressions needed to live in sure forms in paintings? I try to move forward while sensing the natural order I accept every day.
— Mio Kaneda
Yesterday Escapes in Vapour (2024) Oil on canvas, H145.5xW112cm ©︎Mio Kaneda
* From La pensée sauvage (The Savage Mind), Claude Levi-Strauss, translated by George Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd., University of Chicago Press, 1966, p.7). This paragraph also references Yasei no shiso, the Japanese translation of the same work, by Yasuo Ohashi, Misuzu Shobo, 1976.
Mio Kaneda
Born in 1963, Tokyo. Lives and works in Tokyo. Completed graduate course at Tama Art University in 1988. Kaneda was also supported by the Japanese Government Study Program for Artists in 2005. Her major exhibitions include Warmth of Intimacy (GALLERY CAPTION, Gifu, Japan, 2024), Tsukurikake Lab 11 – Mio Kaneda “Kingdom of Lines” (Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan, 2023), (LOOP HOLE, Tokyo, 2023), Energy Overflowing from the Gaze (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022), Observation: artists confronting the wonder of looking intently (Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, Gunma, Japan, 2019), Open Studio Program 73: Kaneda Mio – The Blue Sky and the Moon (Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, 2018), Quintet: Five-Star Artists (Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2014), Artist File 2009: The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2009), and more. Additionally, her works were collected by Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi, The Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Fuchu Art Museum, and Agency for Cultural Affairs.
The Emerging Truth (2024) Oil on canvas, H91xW72.7cm ©︎Mio Kaneda