Exhibition: Paris Internationale 2023

Bureau is pleased to participate in Paris Internationale 2023 with a solo project by New York artist, Ian Miyamura (b. 1991 Kailua, Hawaii). Miyamura will present a suite of recent paintings from several of his disparate series showing the scope of his varied practice. Included in the booth are his meticulous and focused still life paintings of unpainted Warhammer miniatures, vast skyscapes featuring optically flattened, soaring seabirds, text paintings cleverly disguised in abstract expressionist stylings, and a pair of strange relatives in the form of checkerboard grids. Each series has its own style, executed with careful technique and conscientious attention to the different historical modes that each series references. Miyamura talks about his use of style as a sort of study in mimesis, each approach is implemented as a cloak of genre and technique. His broad range brings us from the gravity of the horizontal plane where gray miniatures rest on tabletops, highlighted by raking studio light, to the limitless, dusky skies where the gulls glide. The grid and text works are situated in the realm of logic and, for that matter, riddle. With their shift away from the imaginative pictorial space, they are a reminder of the essential materiality of a painted image, and a necessary return to the surface.

Miyamura received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 2013, and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, in 2019. He is a recipient of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation of Chicago Fellowship (2013) as well as the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Foundation Fellowship (2017). In 2021, Miyamura attended MASS MoCA’s artist residency program as a fellowship recipient. In 2022 he was awarded a FST Studio Projects Fund grant. Solo exhibitions include OCTOBER 31, 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago, IL, 2022. Recent group exhibitions include My Condolences, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2023; A Tournament of Lies, The Wassaic Project, Wassiac, NY, 2022.