One After 909 is pleased to present solo exhibition Michiko Itatani: Cosmic Codes. Created between 2005 and 2019, the oil paintings range in size from monumental to miniature. They are a continuation of the personal and humanistic work that has always been at the heart of Itatani’s oeuvre: her personal reflections on culture, technology, and human behavior. While all of the featured paintings are in a primarily black and white color palette, Itatani’s works explore the grey areas of the human condition in an effort to make sense our complex reality.
Itatani began her artistic career as a writer, which is reflected in her work in the Japanese calligraphy that delicately details her paintings and the way each piece contains its own narrative like a chapter in a novel. She has developed painted vocabularies to articulate and make sense of the struggles of our society. Chiefly, she is concerned about climate change and the way much of the stress on our environment is caused by humans. Although the trajectory that we are currently on may seem bleak to some, Itatani remains forcefully optimistic.
This sense of optimism permeates each of her paintings wherein she illustrates the potential of humankind by creating worlds with multiple possibilities. Science fiction merges with relics of the past in her depictions of libraries, hallways, gardens etc. with symmetrical architecture. Geometric tesseracts and ephemeral orbs radiate an energy and light beyond “unthinkable” solutions without the fear of failure. Itatani’s reflective visions of reality provide us with a sense of hope for what we can still accomplish in our fleeting existence on earth.
About Michiko Itatani:
Michiko Itatani is a Chicago-based artist. In her youth, she studied literature and philosophy and wanted to become a fiction writer. Following her writing teacher’s advice, she decided to do something she had never done before in a place she had never been before. She came to the U.S.A. in the early 1970’s and studied visual art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She started to show her paintings and installation work in 1973 and she has been active in the field ever since.
Michiko Itatani’s work has been seen in more than 100 one-person and group exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally. The largest of these solo exhibitions were at the Alternative Museum, New York City (1985); Rockford Art Museum, Illinois (1987); Musée du Quebec, Canada, (1988); Muskegon Museum, Michigan (1992); Chicago Cultural Center(1992); Wright Museum of Beloit College, Wisconsin(1994); Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta(1995); Shinjuku Park Tower Gallery, Tokyo(1996); Tokoha Museum, Shizuoka, Japan(1998); Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana(1998); Elmhurst Museum, Elmhurst, IL(1999); Frauen Museum, Bonn, Germany(2000); University of Wyoming Art Museum, WY(2002); Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, MO(2003), South Bend Museum of Art, IN(2014); Zhou B Art Center, Chicago(2016); Hatheway Cultural Center, Godfrey, IL(2017); Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL(2017).
She has received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Marie Sharp Walsh New York Studio Grant and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship among others. She was selected by the Women’s Caucus for a Lifetime Achievement Award 2020.
Image above: Michiko Itatani, “Cosmic Wanderlust” painting from CTRL-Home/Echo CRH–2, 2011, 78 x 96 inches, Oil on canvas
Preview images – HERE
Read review of Cosmic Codes in NewCity magazine – HERE