There is a wonderfully restrained, diverse group show up at Tiger Strikes Asteroid through December 11, 2021. I was able to swing by to see the work on November 6th and take the photographs posted here. If you’re in the area you should go as well. The exhibition has a website with a lot of additional information here.

Below are some photos I took while in the space for roughly an hour. I was there alone. It was an amazing experience to be with Ito’s work again after so long. Previously I had seen it while living in the Chicagoland area in the late 90s and early 2000s (I earned my BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001).

These images above are details of an untitled work left incomplete when she died. Miyoko Ito. Untitled, graphite and oil on canvas, unfinished. 1983.

It was wonderful to see this unfinished work. It reveals much about Ito’s late working methods, making the way she approached the development of composition, mark, and surface apparent. Her effort to manifest both deliberative control and extemporaneous invention feels clear here in this piece; it functions as a kind of key to help decipher certain aspects of the complete works. It really surprised and delighted me, and made me re-think how I had understood her work previously.

The presentation and lighting of these works really allowed for close viewing. See the details below (click on each to open to full size) to see more of Ito’s surface and mark quality.

I love the translucency of the color gradients in 1948.. As with all of her mature work, Ito maintains the original charcoal marks while also methodically, and with dedicated gracefulness, produces dense swaths of interrelated color. There is a feeling of epochal time here, slow and calm; almost beyond human.

In many ways Miyoko Ito is a conductor of visual dynamics. She finds elements that lock or pinch, such as the simple geometries of circles or triangles (as seen in the detail above). These are almost always staged in linear structures that rise from the very base layers, tuned by charcoal and adjoining brush marks.

One of the most special moments of the show for me was catching a glimpse of a little smeared mark in The Ken. It feels to me as if Ito has reached out with her pinkie finger to flick that earthy red, dissipating it into the surrounding field of neutral grayish-tan.

Another wonderful moment in this painting is show in the detail below. The spatial interplay between the gray-blue ribbon/band form and the red-orange rectilinear box shape is astounding. The choreography taking place here is so precise and poetic, and the eye bends and twists around the piece, flipping from surface to space to, from edge to texture. Miyoko Ito leads us in an unnameable spatio-temporal dance.

These moments all seem like intimate disclosures. Miyoko Ito still speaks, even as we approach 40 years since her death. The work of curators like Nicole Mauser and Jordan Stein has done much toward keeping the legacy and influence of Ito alive. I still resonate with that day more than 23 years ago when I first saw Ito’s work hanging at the Roger Brown Study Collection. It was nice to experience that reverie once again at this excellent exhibition.