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NEW YORK

Miya Ando

Blue Sky Codex

October 24 – December 14, 2024

Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) June 1 2024 2:48 PM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 119.5 x 122.125 inches/303.5 x 310 cm
Boun (Twilight Cloud) Triptych October 2 2021 6:18 AM Tokyo, 2021, ink on aluminum composite, 60 x 124 inches/152.4 x 315 cm
Hamon (A Cloud-like Pattern On The Edge Of A Sword) Morning Mist, 2024,dye, pigment, resin & urethane on aluminum, 48 x 96 inches/122 x 244 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) July 1 2023 3:45 PM Bolinas, CA, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 98.5 x 98.5 inches/250.2 x 250.2 cm
166 Kumo (Cloud) Study Color, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 13.5 x 13.5 inches/34.3 x 34.3 cm
168 Kumo (Cloud) Study Color, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 13.5 x 13.5 inches/34.3 x 34.3 cm
174 Kumo (Cloud) Study Color, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 13.5 x 13.5 inches/34.3 x 34.3 cm
165 Kumo (Cloud) Study Color, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 13.5 x 13.5 inches/34.3 x 34.3 cm
Morning Cloud (Asagumo) January 3 2024 8:45:46 AM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Hamon (Cloudlike Pattern On The Edge Of A Sword) Mist 5.29.24, 2024, dye, pigment, resin & urethane on aluminum, 24 x 48 inches/61 x 122 cm
Chou-Un (Clouds That Resemble A Flock Of Birds Covering The Sky) May 21 2024, 2024, micronized pure silver, pigment, resin & urethane on aluminum, 48 x 72 inches/122 x 182.9 cm
Morning Cloud (Asagumo) January 5 2024 7:02:25 AM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) April 10 2024 7:05 AM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 55.5 inches/95.3 x 141 cm
Oborozukiyō (A Night With A Moon Obscured By Clouds) May 10 2024, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 50 x 98 inches/127 x 248.9 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) July 30 2022 2:20 PM Hour Of The Sheep NYC, 2022, ink on aluminum composite, 50 x 98 inches/127 x 248.9 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) April 18 2024 6:56 AM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 25.5 x 37.5 inches/64.8 x 95.5 cm
Morning Cloud (Asagumo) February 7 2023 6:24 AM NYC, 2023, dye, ink, pure micronized silver, resin & rrethane on aluminum composite, 41.5 x 41.5 inches/105.4 x 105.4 cm
Morning Cloud (Asagumo) January 6 2024 7:56:11AM NYC, 2024, ink on aluminum composite, 49.5 x 49.5 inches/125.7 x 125.7 cm
Morning Cloud (Asagumo) May 8 2024 6:59 AM NYC, 2024, dye, ink, pure micronized silver, resin & urethane on aluminum composite, 50 x 50 inches/127 x 127 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) October 2 2023 3:15:29 PM NYC, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) September 26 2023 6:08:32 AM NYC, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) September 27 2023 5:55:11 AM NYC, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) September 28 2023 3:42:19 PM NYC, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Unkai (A Sea Of Clouds) September 29 2023 6:22:10 PM NYC, 2023, ink on aluminum composite, 37.5 x 37.5 inches/95.3 x 95.3 cm
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando
Miya Ando

About This Exhibition

We are pleased to present a new series of paintings on metal by Miya Ando (b. 1973, Los Angeles), which explores subtle shifts in the coloration of the sky. For the past decade, Ando has been closely studying the sky, taking photographs almost daily in New York as well as during her travels to the West Coast, Japan and Costa Rica. The images—which chronicle different hours, weather conditions and seasonal changes—inspired the paintings on view. In conjunction with this show, Ando has released Blue Sky Codex (Aotenjō Nikki), an illustrated Japanese-English visual dictionary documenting 210 shades of blue.

 

Ando has achieved critical acclaim for her atmospheric paintings and large-scale installations that articulate fleeting natural phenomena. Her practice is rooted in the Japanese philosophical concept mono-no-aware, loosely translated as “an acute awareness of the transience of things,” a bittersweet sentiment often linked to nature and the passage of time.

 

The artist describes the new series as a means of mapping the sky, recording time, and locating her place in the world through minute observation of the varied tones of the color blue. At once diaristic and personal, this compendium of paintings also has universal resonance. “In many senses this project functions as an extinction diary,” she says. “I am recording the environment today but maybe some of these colors will disappear. It’s a yearning to preserve and chronicle that.” Amid the threat of climate change, Ando sees the paintings as an invitation to become more attuned to our natural surroundings.

 

When Ando began observing the sky, she learned that there are a multitude of poetic words for the color blue in Japanese, but found these words missing from the English lexicon. This inspired her to publish Blue Sky Codex (Aotenjō Nikki), a visual dictionary containing 210 Japanese words for blue translated into English. For each shade, she made a small pastel sketch and a corresponding photograph of the color found in the sky. The blues listed range from “India Indigo,” a velvety dark blue described as evoking “the deep and unfathomable ocean,” to “Wisteria Mouse,” a lavender-gray shade derived from the image of mouse passing a wisteria flower. Exposing lacunae in the English language, the book elucidates the deep appreciation of nature embedded in Japanese culture. It also formed a conceptual base for the nuanced paintings on view.

 

Ando’s profound understanding of color shines through in this ethereal body of work. The paintings range from a triptych that records a pale-blue twilight fading to pink on an autumn day in Tokyo to a summer afternoon in New York where a bright-blue sky is visible through a veil of silvery clouds. Ando uses watercolor-like techniques as well as printing techniques to layer translucent washes of ink and pigment mixed with urethane onto aluminum. Leaving some areas bare, she allows the metal to shine amid passages of color capturing the mercurial nature of the sky. In some works, she also embeds micronized pure silver, a fine dust-like material, giving the works a luminous quality.

 

In many senses this compendium of paintings operates as a single, monumental work. Seen collectively, the images immerse viewers in the expansiveness of the sky and invite reflection on nature not only as a precious resource but also as a source of wisdom. “Clouds and the sky may appear ordinary, but they can also be conceptually rich,” says Ando. “They are a vivid reminder of the impermanence and the transience of life, which is the foundation of my practice.”

 

ABOUT MIYA ANDO

 

Miya Ando is a Japanese and American artist based in New York City. Her art is rooted in the dialectic coexistence of Eastern and Western cultures through the lens of natural phenomena.

 

Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, California; as well as numerous private collections.

 

Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted at Asia Society Texas, Houston; The Noguchi Museum, New York; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia; Nassau County Museum, Roslyn Harbor, New York; American University Museum, Washington, DC; and Bolinas Museum, California. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Bronx Museum and Queens Museum, New York; and Haus der Kunst, Munich.

 

In fall 2025, MIT Press will publish Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2000 Rain Words. In a similar vein to Ando’s Blue Sky Codex, it is a Japanese-English visual dictionary that compiles 2,000 Japanese words describing rain alongside English translations, and a corresponding indigo and micronized silver drawing on Hahnemühle or washi.

Ando has been the recipient of multiple grants and awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, and has produced several public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture built from World Trade Center steel for 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. Ando was also commissioned to create artwork for the historic Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut. Most recently, Ando received the 2023 Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission. The site-specific commission, titled Flower Atlas Calendar, was on view at the Winter Garden in Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan in July 2023.

 

The artist has a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley, pursued East Asian studies at Yale University, and apprenticed with a master metalsmith in Japan.

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