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HI-POINT CONTACT
MICHIKO ITATANI SOLO EXHIBITION
ZHOU B HAUS DER KUNST
2016 | OCTOBER 21 - DECEMBER 30
Hi-Point Contact
1976-Present
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again.... One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
"I became an artist and have been making art for 4 decades. I didn't think art would be my calling when I was growing up. Countless seemingly insignificant yet sincere decisions made me who I am now. It was not an easy process, but I am happy that I did what I wanted without compromise at the core.
For this exhibition at the Zhou B Art Center, I selected 23 works created between 1976-Present. I titled the exhibition Hi-Point Contact.
“Hi-Point Contact” is an engineering term describing a momentary touching of two elements. I expanded it’s meaning and made a series of works under this title in the 1990’s. It was a section of my on-going questions about human existence in the larger context of the universe. I have been examining the human condition from different angles, from inside and from outside. The appearance of my work has been changing based on the particular focus, but my basic concerns have been consistent, always personal and humanistic.
In these compositions, using a fictional and symbolic space, in which I condense experienced and imagined multi-layered events, I am examining the connections between the body and the cosmos, flesh and technology, person and person, Individual and State, group and group, nation and nation, desire and choice, taboo and obsession, and so on. “Hi-Point Contact” is my fiction writing: incomplete, fragmented and under inquiry."
Michiko Itatani 2016
Of, Around, and About Michiko Itatani
By Jason Foumberg
Who is Michiko Itatani?
Since the mid-1970s Michiko Itatani has contributed a solo show nearly every year to Chicago’s painting landscape, her long career outliving half a dozen galleries, with pounds of essays published on her work. Across four decades you can see Itatani’s pictorial style evolve from Minimalism to Mythology to Quantum Physics—yet always the picture is recognizably Itatani, what they call her “hand,” what they call having an “eye,” a deeply analytic and auto-biographic allegory.
In lifelong pursuit of a personal iconography, Itatani’s artwork has wrestled with being an individual in society, of being human among insects and oceans, of being alive between moments of not being. She is the protagonist of a story that she is writing in her mind, its plot a Self vs. Nature tragicomedy sprinkled with stardust. In that story she conquers distant lands and dimensions, along the way discovering an alchemy that turns trauma into poetry. She is obsessed with performing acts of philosophy and compassion, but rarely at the same time.
What is Michiko Itatani?
Eleven-foot stretcher bars, custom polygons, oil paint on canvas, monochromatic beings, hyperchromatic macrocosms, atoms arranged in a particular form, a sum of ancestors, a collection of wisdom, a liberated system for art-making.
Where is Michiko Itatani?
In a 1970s Chicago artist-run gallery in the Milky Way; in the Midwest and in utopia; in a classroom and dancing on a neuron; among Chicago Imagism and 1990s Expressionism but against style; in a snowstorm but warm inside with a book; in an encyclopedia that is also a painting; in a sketch and attending to sprits; in her studio and signaling across the room, across time.
When is Michiko Itatani?
In a lifetime you see a lot of war. You see a lot of suffering. Where do you go from there? Michiko Itatani the person was born in a certain place and lives in a certain time but her paintings are elsewhere, out there, in mythic time, in zodiac time, in the afterlife. It’s not a place to be; it’s a matter of being.
Why is Michiko Itatani?
As people we are the byproduct of our struggles. To feel free, Itatani has brushed aside the dominant styles of her time, survived the death of painting (several times) and the death of real people, chose to live in the Midwest and wrestled with self-identity, her mind a collage of knowledge, pouring herself into paintings.
Post-Script: How is Michiko Itatani?
“When I was young I thought I would live forever,” says Michiko. “Now I think the human species occupies such a tiny little portion of cosmic time; yet, we might destroy ourselves. But I am pathetically optimistic. We have this very precious, wonderful occasion to enjoy real time. I am aware this painting I'm doing is not going to last forever.” So let’s enjoy the paintings while we can.
Jason Foumberg is an art historian based in Chicago.
MICHIKO ITATANI SOLO EXHIBITION
ZHOU B HAUS DER KUNST
2016 | OCTOBER 21 - DECEMBER 30
Hi-Point Contact
1976-Present
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again.... One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
"I became an artist and have been making art for 4 decades. I didn't think art would be my calling when I was growing up. Countless seemingly insignificant yet sincere decisions made me who I am now. It was not an easy process, but I am happy that I did what I wanted without compromise at the core.
For this exhibition at the Zhou B Art Center, I selected 23 works created between 1976-Present. I titled the exhibition Hi-Point Contact.
“Hi-Point Contact” is an engineering term describing a momentary touching of two elements. I expanded it’s meaning and made a series of works under this title in the 1990’s. It was a section of my on-going questions about human existence in the larger context of the universe. I have been examining the human condition from different angles, from inside and from outside. The appearance of my work has been changing based on the particular focus, but my basic concerns have been consistent, always personal and humanistic.
In these compositions, using a fictional and symbolic space, in which I condense experienced and imagined multi-layered events, I am examining the connections between the body and the cosmos, flesh and technology, person and person, Individual and State, group and group, nation and nation, desire and choice, taboo and obsession, and so on. “Hi-Point Contact” is my fiction writing: incomplete, fragmented and under inquiry."
Michiko Itatani 2016
Of, Around, and About Michiko Itatani
By Jason Foumberg
Who is Michiko Itatani?
Since the mid-1970s Michiko Itatani has contributed a solo show nearly every year to Chicago’s painting landscape, her long career outliving half a dozen galleries, with pounds of essays published on her work. Across four decades you can see Itatani’s pictorial style evolve from Minimalism to Mythology to Quantum Physics—yet always the picture is recognizably Itatani, what they call her “hand,” what they call having an “eye,” a deeply analytic and auto-biographic allegory.
In lifelong pursuit of a personal iconography, Itatani’s artwork has wrestled with being an individual in society, of being human among insects and oceans, of being alive between moments of not being. She is the protagonist of a story that she is writing in her mind, its plot a Self vs. Nature tragicomedy sprinkled with stardust. In that story she conquers distant lands and dimensions, along the way discovering an alchemy that turns trauma into poetry. She is obsessed with performing acts of philosophy and compassion, but rarely at the same time.
What is Michiko Itatani?
Eleven-foot stretcher bars, custom polygons, oil paint on canvas, monochromatic beings, hyperchromatic macrocosms, atoms arranged in a particular form, a sum of ancestors, a collection of wisdom, a liberated system for art-making.
Where is Michiko Itatani?
In a 1970s Chicago artist-run gallery in the Milky Way; in the Midwest and in utopia; in a classroom and dancing on a neuron; among Chicago Imagism and 1990s Expressionism but against style; in a snowstorm but warm inside with a book; in an encyclopedia that is also a painting; in a sketch and attending to sprits; in her studio and signaling across the room, across time.
When is Michiko Itatani?
In a lifetime you see a lot of war. You see a lot of suffering. Where do you go from there? Michiko Itatani the person was born in a certain place and lives in a certain time but her paintings are elsewhere, out there, in mythic time, in zodiac time, in the afterlife. It’s not a place to be; it’s a matter of being.
Why is Michiko Itatani?
As people we are the byproduct of our struggles. To feel free, Itatani has brushed aside the dominant styles of her time, survived the death of painting (several times) and the death of real people, chose to live in the Midwest and wrestled with self-identity, her mind a collage of knowledge, pouring herself into paintings.
Post-Script: How is Michiko Itatani?
“When I was young I thought I would live forever,” says Michiko. “Now I think the human species occupies such a tiny little portion of cosmic time; yet, we might destroy ourselves. But I am pathetically optimistic. We have this very precious, wonderful occasion to enjoy real time. I am aware this painting I'm doing is not going to last forever.” So let’s enjoy the paintings while we can.
Jason Foumberg is an art historian based in Chicago.
