INDEX

<

Washington, DC---- March 1 through April 25 Shigeko Bork Mu Project, a Georgetown-based gallery focusing on contemporary art from Asia, features DE RERUM NATURA: On The Nature Of Things, a solo exhibition of new paintings from Washington, DC-based Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, whose work melds ancient Japanese tradition and contemporary culture. A reception for the artist is scheduled Saturday, 1 March, 5 pm to 8 pm. "Turner-Yamamoto's new work provides audiences with an opportunity to experience the artist's ongoing interest in natural phenomena and his search for its essence," says Bork. "The exhibition reflects Mu Project's program to expand awareness of established eastern artists and the dynamism and sophistication that informs Asian art and culture."

With THREE WINDOWS: Sun, Moon, Star, April 18- May 2, Turner-Yamamoto creates works for the first exhibition in Ippaku-tei teahouse at the Embassy of Japan, organized by the Japan Information & Culture Center (JICC). Brought from Kyoto, the structure was installed in 1950 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of relations between Japan and the United States and has never before been open to the public. Newly renovated, the teahouse and its garden will only be open during the exhibition. Inspired by Sankou-tourou, the "three lights" lantern included in the original teahouse design, Turner-Yamamoto will create a room of the sun and a room of the moon and stars. In the room of the sun, located in the Buka-an tearoom, he will install a painting embodying a ghost-like sun image. In the room of the moon and stars located in Hiro-ma (large room), the work MOON/STAR features "OMPHALOS," a stoneware sculpture using light and the smoke of burning incense to project a wavering image of the full moon onto a painting of stars suspended from the ceiling.

GLOBAL TREE PROJECT: Seeding, featured at the Arlington Arts Center from April 8-May 3, documents a collaboration between the artists and science students at Barrett Elementary School, Arlington, Virginia. In this community project supported by the Arlington Commission for the Arts, Individual Artist Project Grants, Turner-Yamamoto asked students to create greenhouses for plants they germinated from seeds collected from their food. Turner-Yamamoto creates an installation with these students' greenhouses. Students' drawings documenting their process will also be on view. Further information on these ancillary projects is included at the end of the release.

Titling his current body of work after DE RERUM NATURA: On The Nature Of Things, the book by Lucretius, Roman poet/philosopher, Turner-Yamamoto created many of the works in this show this winter while on the wild coast of southwest Ireland. There, in collaboration with the pervasive rain and wind, he created "rain drawings" en plein air. Shafts of light and ephemeral rainbows-- elements of the Irish winter landscape-- inspired the artist to concentrate on light and its natural permutations as the principal subject of these works.

Focused on nature and the environment, Turner-Yamamoto's work presents an interplay between absence and presence that emanates a strong quiet spiritual energy. Using ash and soot, expressive of both endings and beginnings, he poetically connects death and rebirth, the conjunction where the mystery of life lies. In the artist's favorite Japanese fairy tale, Hanasaka Jiisan, ashes sprinkled onto withered cherry trees generate rebirth. In Ireland, ash and soot from the turf burned in his fireplace, coupled with Indian yellow, gambouge, sheep's wool, crystals, silver and slate powders, and tree resin presented the ideal pigment to express these natural manifestations and his emotional reactions to specific events in the landscape. "Moonbow," a work recorded in the artist's field journal, makes us witness to a galactic event far beyond the painting's diminutive scale. The shadowy form of a rainbow emerges from the voided black depths of a night sky lit by a small constellation of silver stars. Colors laid down wet on the black ground coalesce in a field of violet, orange, and indigo with the power of an exploding star. In "Rainbow," Turner-Yamamoto layers a rain drawing executed on archival acetate with ash over a drawing of a rainbow. The pairing of earth and light captures the short-lived nature of Ireland's constantly shifting skies. In "Light," a rain drawing overlaid with soot and Indian yellow, Turner-Yamamoto evokes the momentary break of a ray of sun through moving storm clouds.

Turner-Yamamoto has exhibited widely throughout Europe and Japan, studied at Kyoto City University of Arts and Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. His awards include the 2008 Porvoo Artfactory Residency, Finland, a 2007 Arlington Commission for the Arts,Humanities Project Grant, 2007 Cill Rialaig Project, Kerry, Ireland, 2000 Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes, and 2000 first prize from the international Targetti Light Art Collection. Site-specific installations include Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa, Italy, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland, Navdanya's Bija Vidyapeeth, Dehradun, India for UNESCO-ASCHBERG Bursaries for Artists, Kiyomizu Temple and Saigyo-an, Kyoto for an international invitational in Kyoto's temples and Nijo Castle which he curated.

WHAT: THREE WINDOWS: Sun, Moon, Star

WHEN: April 18 - May 2, 12:00am-5:30pm (Mon, Tue, Wed), 12:00am-8pm (Thu, Fri) (Photo ID required for entry)

Artist's reception, April 17, 7:00-9:00 pm, Public invited (Photo ID required for entry)
RSVP Required: 202.238.6949 or jiccrsvpspring08@embjapan.org

Curator/Media Preview, April 17, 6:00-7:00pm (Photo ID required for entry)

WHERE: Embassy of Japan, 2520 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC

WHAT: GLOBAL TREE PROJECT: Seeding

WHEN: April 8 - May 3, 11:00am-5:00pm (Tue-Sat)

Artist's reception, April 11, 6:00-9:00pm, Public Invited

WHERE: Arlington Arts Center, Jenkins Gallery, 3550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 703.248.6800

Shigeko Bork Mu Project, 1521 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, #2, Washington, DC - www.muproject.com

<

INDEX