Michio Ihara: Paper and Steel

The subscription service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.

Michio Ihara: Paper and Steel

January 12 – February 26, 2017

Michio Ihara’s kinetic steel sculptures have been displayed internationally in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and across the United States. A resident of Concord since the 1980’s, his sculpture “3D Chicago” has been on The Umbrella’s front lawn for several years and was the inspiration for this year’s BIG Art show, Metal in Motion.  New this year, Ihara is displaying two recent sculptures, “Cascade Sculpture 2016” and “Whorl – 2015.”

This January and February, The Umbrella is proud to present Michio Ihara: Paper and Steel, an indoor exhibition to accompany the pieces on our front lawn. Small scale steel sculptures will be complimented by dramatic red and black gouache drawings that reveal Ihara’s incredible attention to detail at both the micro and macro level. Ihara originally studied oil painting at Tokyo University of Fine Arts before studying at the Department of Architecture at MIT on a Fulbright Grant.

Artist Statement:

My study at Tokyo University of Art was in oil painting. After having graduated, I worked for a number of years with ink and gouache on paper and in 1957 and 1959 received my first architectural commissions, translating the forms in my paintings into designs for inlaid marble murals. After coming to the United States on a Fulbright grant to study with Gyorgy Kepes at MIT’s Department of Architecture, I made the transition from two to three-dimensional work. 

Recently, looking back at my works on paper—some executed over sixty years ago—I discovered that I liked them very much, and that the lines, shapes and forms I explored in my early work relate to my later work in sculpture. 

This exhibition has offered me the opportunity to pair the early and the recent, the works on paper and the work in metal.