​MIYUKI INAGAKI

この度CLEAR GALLERY TOKYOは、稲垣美侑の個展「渦としかく」を開催いたします。 弊廊で2年ぶりの個展となる本展では、稲垣が2018年から継続的に訪れている三重県鳥羽市の離島で出会った情景から制作された新作の油彩画、陶器などの立体作品を展示いたします。

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稲垣は、自分の置かれている状況や他者の理解など様々な環境を含めて、自身のごく素朴な関心として「目の前に広がっている世界がどんな姿だったのか」ということを考えたり想像することが、作品をつくる動機付けのひとつになっていると言います。そして身辺にある環境を観察し、日常の積み重ねから生まれる景色やその場所に宿る記憶や感触、その場所に触れることで得たイメージの断片を、画面の中で確かめながら再構築しています。 また稲垣は、制作においての重要な取り組みとして、何度も繰り返し取材地を訪れることを続けています。それは稲垣にとって何か大きな実践というよりも、日常の延長線上の中で眺められる景色への探求心であり、行ったり来たりを繰り返し、その往復運動で打ち返される感覚や、生き物や他者からの目線、その地に残された言い伝えなど周囲や環境とのやり取りから、何か現実だけではない人間由来の想像力や遊戯的な行為によって紡がれる物語の切れ端のようなものを、絵や展示空間のなかで描き起こそうとしています。

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本展のタイトルである「渦としかく」は、2018年頃から継続的に訪れている三重県鳥羽市の離島で出会った建造物と、その建物を棲家とするカタツムリから名付けられています。

折に触れて幾度なく訪れるその離島で目的もなくただ道なき道を歩み進める中、突然林の中に出現したコンクリートの建物は、戦時中に砲弾の着弾点を観測するために建てられたものです。今は用途を失いカタツムリの居心地の良い棲家となり、かつて砲弾を観測していた大きく開口された窓からは、美しい水平線を眺望することができます。 人間主体で作られた建物が、その意図とは関係のないところで新しい役割を持ち、島の自然の一部と化した景色、カタツムリと廃墟の共存的関係性から着想を得て制作された新作の作品群は、隣り合う面と面の色や形の関係性へと還元され、画布と溶け込むように丁寧に重ねられた揺らぎある色彩が印象的な抽象的な絵画や、異素材で構成されたコラージュ作品、また今年から見られる陶器の立体作品として展示発表いたします。

 制作活動の初期より、稲垣にとって絵画制作とは、絵画が存在する空間を含めての表現であり、本展は稲垣の言葉でいうところの「絵画的空間」が意識された展示になります。そのような意識を顕著に空間構成に取り入れたのが三重県立美術館「パラランドスケープ “風景”をめぐる想像力の現在」（2019年）での展示になりますが、環境を往還する稲垣の活動と重なるように外へと広がった表現は、2019年以降一時的に絵画の内へと立ち戻され、絵の役割やその中で起こることに向かい合う制作時期を意識的に設けてきました。しかし今年に入って再び、絵画内の色や形が、陶器や異素材で制作された作品などに緩やかに展開されるようになったのは、イメージを探る過程や作る行為の中でこぼれ落ちてくるもの含めて、それぞれを表現内の一部として空間に存在させてみる、という試みと意識の変化が表れています。

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稲垣が提示する、違うものが存在しながらもそれぞれが響き合うことで生まれる新しい景色は、私たちの日常の中にまだ見えていない多くの愉快な光景が広がっていることを思い起こさせます。会場を歩きながら、鑑賞者それぞれの視点でお楽しみいただけたら幸いです。

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CLEAR GALLERY TOKYO is pleased to present Miyuki Inagaki's solo exhibition "Whorls and Quadrangles".
This exhibition will feature new oil paintings, drawings, and ceramic works created from scenes Inagaki encountered at the isolated island of Toba, Mie Prefecture, which she has been visiting continuously since 2018.

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Inagaki says that one of her motivations for creating artworks is to think and imagine "what the world that spreads out in front of me looks like," as a very simple interest of hers, including various environments such as her own situation and the understanding of others.
She observes the environment around her and confirms and reconstructs on the canvas the landscape created by the accumulation of daily life, the memories and textures that reside in the place, and the fragments of images obtained by touching the place.

Inagaki also continues to visit the places she covers over and over again as an important part of the creative process.
It is not some big practice for Inagaki, but rather an exploration of the landscape that can be viewed as an extension of the everyday.
She tries to appear in her paintings and exhibition space something like a slice of a story that is not only real but is spun by human imagination and playful actions, through the sensations that are struck back and forth by the repetitive movement back and forth, and the interaction with the surroundings and environment, such as creatures, the eyes of others and local legends.

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The title of this exhibition, 'Whorls and Quadrangles', is named after a building encountered on a remote island in Toba, Mie Prefecture, which Inagaki has been visiting continuously since around 2018, and the snails that live in the building.
The concrete building, which appeared suddenly in the middle of a forest as she walked aimlessly along a roadless path on the remote island, was built during the war to observe the point of impact of artillery shells. Now it has lost its purpose and has become a cosy habitat for snails, and the beautiful horizon can be seen from the wide-opened windows where shells used to be observed.
The image is inspired by the coexisting relationship between snails and ruins, a landscape in which buildings created with a human focus have taken on a new role regardless of their intentions and become part of the island's nature, In the paintings, the images are reduced to the relationship between the colours and shapes of the adjacent surfaces, and are presented as abstract paintings with impressive shimmering colours carefully layered to blend with the canvas, collage works composed of different materials, and ceramic sculptures that have been seen this year.
Since the beginning of Inagaki’s career, she has been aware that painting is an expression that includes the space in which the painting exists, and that this exhibition is, in her words, "a space composed as if it were a painting".

Such awareness was notably incorporated into the spatial composition of the exhibition at the Mie Prefectural Art Museum's "Para-Landscape Imagination to Face the Changing Reality” (2019), and the expressions that spread outwards overlap with Inagaki's activities that go back and forth between environments, From 2019 onwards, she had temporarily returned to the inner world of painting and has consciously set aside a period of production to confront the role of painting and what happens within it.
And from this year, the colours and shapes in the paintings are again being gently developed in works made from ceramics and other materials, which shows a change in awareness and an attempt to make each of them a part of the expression, including those that spill over in the process of exploring and creating the image, and to make them present in the space.

The new landscapes presented by Inagaki, which are created by different things existing and yet resonating with each other, remind us that many delightful views are spreading in our daily lives that we have yet to see.
We hope that visitors will enjoy the exhibition from their viewpoints as they walk around the exhibition.