I felt the urge to see something beautiful, so I went to the Toki-no-Wasuremono gallery to see Keiko Miyamori’s show, <Surfaces of Time > (or <The Collected Surfaces of Time and Space>). Miyamori places thin pieces of gampi paper on tree trunks and traces “jyutaku “ (frottaged tree bark patterns) with pieces of charcoal. The walls of the gallery are covered with gampi, forming translucent, gauze-like tapestries. No matter how layered, the gampi retains its ethereal lightness.

The child’s beds are suspended from the ceiling, covered with jyutaku; each looks as if thin ink has been sprinkled on it. Pink rose petals lie on top of the bed. When a jyutaku on thin gampi is partially glued to a wall or picture frame, it dances in the air, giving the impression of a curtain blowing in the wind. When it tightly wraps a bird cage, a globe, or a tree branch, it seems like a protective membrane. 

Just as a tree ring does, jyutaku also reveals a tree’s age. And when I hear that the jyutaku are from trees in New York, where the artist lives, or in Rikugi-Garden, near the gallery, my heart overflows with emotion. Coronavirus has created so much distance between us and has separated us more than ever before. 

I found myself lost in a mental image of delicate white, gray and rose. After thinking for a while, a slender figure appeared wearing the white costume of the late Kazuo Ohno. The figure moved with a grace more subtle than an ordinary Butoh dancers. Another sign. 

I have in my hands an old pink transparent silk scarf. I heard that it was dyed with cherry bark. I remember being surprised learning the brown bark of the cherry tree hides the pink color of its flowers. Miyamori’s jyutaku are not always from cherry trees, so a latent pink might not exist in her work. Instead, the only color in this exhibition is the light red of the rose petals, and the old typewriter covered with jyutaku. Printed on the page coming out from the typewriter is a single word: rose.

 

Tokiko Suzuki From Facebook October 15, 2020

Due to Covid , there was a limited access to the gallery. Gallery talk between Shinya Koizumi, art critic, and Keiko Miyamori, artist, was held online. A pdf booklet created from the exhibition can also be downloaded for free here.