Kimiyo Mishima was born in 1932 in Osaka, and began painting in her teens. Responding to the significant movements in the 1950s - 1960s, such as Art Informel, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Mishima established her own style and invoked techniques such as collage and repetitive imagery to create painting.
Mishima felt fear and anxiety towards the overly informational society of our times in which we are faced with the threat of being overwhelmed by the environment. She drew inspiration from the modern issues that are indispensable but soon rendered as useless garbage. Since 1971, she has been making ceramics as a humorous and “breakable printed matter” work through means of her self-taught silkscreen techniques and methods that enables her to transfer printed matter such as newspapers, magazines and advertising flyers onto a work.
Work 17-YC (2017) is a signature ceramic work that represents Mishima’s keen sensitivity towards the over-informational modern era. She created this empty can sculpture, which has a crushed form as it is to be thrown away as a garbage.
This ceramic work indicates our fragile society and even ourselves who are at the mercy of a society that is overloaded with information. With a sense of ironic humor, Mishima’s ceramic work symbolizes a materialized process in which information obtains a form, and how the object that accompanies it is destined to become waste material.
Major solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Taka Ishii Gallery, New York (2016), Art Factory Jonanjima, Tokyo (2015), “Painting Period 1954-1970”, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art, Hyogo (2013), Gallery Nii, Tokyo (2004), Contemporary Art Museum, Ise, Mie (2004) and Minami Gallery, Tokyo (1974).
Her works are included in the Permanent Collections of The Everson Museum of Art, New York; The First National Bank of Chicago; The Museum of Art Olot, Spain; The Korean Culture & Arts Foundation Seoul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Benesse Art Site Naoshima; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
