Miya Ando Mirror Shou Sugi Ban 3.3.5

Miya Ando
b. 1973
Mirror Shou Sugi Ban 3.3.5

Executed in 2020.
charred reclaimed redwood, silver nitrate
36 by 36 by 1 ½ in. (91.4 by 91.4 by 3.8 cm.)

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Condition Report:
Please contact bid@aspenartmuseum.org for condition report.

Catalogue Note:
Mirror Shou Sugi Ban 3.3.5, by Miya Ando, is made from pieces of wood that have been coated with silver nitrate to give their surface a reflective quality. The title refers to the Japanese shou sugi ban method of charring wood in order to make it weatherproof and pest resistant. By coating the charred wood in silver nitrate, Ando transforms its visual presence and also embeds it with metaphorical content. Liquid silver nitrate is used as a healing agent. It is also used in photography to burn an image onto a paper surface.

Ando was trained in metalworking, both for her artistic practice and as part of a long-running line of artisan metalworkers in her Japanese family. While Western traditions often position metal as a substance separate from “Nature” due to its inorganic character, many Eastern philosophies recognize that metal is part of the natural world and is just as much a vessel for energy as would be water or crystal.

Although Ando’s work is abstract, it references a broad range of ideas that are of interest to her as a practicing Buddhist, such as the ephemeral and transitory character of nature, and the essential qualities that can be conveyed by certain materials, such as metal, glass, and wood.

Ando presents the titles of her works in Japanese and English. During her time living in Japan, she researched literary and historical texts, compiling poetic Japanese descriptions of natural phenomena. Present in the Japanese descriptions are nuanced layers of thought often lacking in the English translation. These bi-lingual titles convey the sense of duality Ando experiences living between two cultures.

Ando’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at The Asia Society Museum, Houston; The Noguchi Museum, New York; Savannah College Of Art and Design Museum, Savannah; The Nassau County Museum, Roslyn Harbor; and The American University Museum, Washington DC; and recent group exhibitions at The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Haus Der Kunst, Munich; The Bronx Museum; and The Queens Museum of Art, NY.

Ando’s work is included in the public collections of LACMA; The Nassau County Museum; The Corning Museum of Glass; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Luft Museum; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; The Museum of Art and History; among other public institutions. Ando has been the recipient of several grants and awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, and has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture built from World Trade Center steel installed in Olympic Park in London to mark the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, for which she was nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, studied East Asian Studies at Yale University and Stanford University, and apprenticed with a Master Metalsmith in Japan.

Provenance:
Kindly donated by the artist and Kavi Gupta