Misako & Rosen is pleased to announce “Ito” our debut solo exhibition with artist Miki Mochizuka. The exhibiton will open on August 27th and run through September 23.
Mochizuka presently lives and works in Shizuoka, where he was born (1974) and where he received a BA in painting from the Tokoha Gakuen Junior College.

Mochizuka utilizes the medium of painting to give expression to elements of existence which are present but non-visible such as memories and air. All paintings are created through Mochizula’s use of memory and imagination, rather than painted from life or a photographic image. The resulting paintings amount to a “collage of images” those recollected and wholly created from the artist’s imagination. Multi layered images overlap to create an expansive, unexplored world within the flat space of the picture plane.

“Ito” is uses a simple sequential morning-day-night as a structural device yet rather than focus on each distinct period of time, Mochizuka paints areas of in-between; the spaces in which consciousness slips from time-to-time without consideration. “Ito” itself is an abstraction as the word, written katakana has multiple possible meanings/readings; the title serves a prompt into a less clear space of understanding.

I don’t paint from sight;
Rather the expression of memories, that which is present in my unconscious, dreams, thoughts, that which was felt, in a physical and emotional sense, is the subject of my paintings – a collage of memory.
My practice does not begin with images found in books or magazines or from purely visual observations staged or from daily life. My paintings are generated from the constant flow of memories past and present. These memories are given form in a abstract manner, through relationships of color and space. The process of creation is so abstract us to elude understanding on my part.
– Miki Mochizuka, July, 2007