Press Release 2012/06/15

Hara Documents 9 Masako Ando: The Garden of Belly Button
July 12 (Thursday) – August 19 (Sunday), 2012
Masako Ando paints children, animals and plants on porcelain-smooth canvas surfaces. Her works arecharacterized by delicate lines, multi-layered colors and a depth that seems to draw the viewer in. HaraDocuments 9 Masako Ando: The Garden of Belly Button is the first solo exhibition at a museum of thissuperbly talented young artist who probes the interval between reality and unreality in search of momentsthat give rise to a picture. Gathered together are 17 works, most of which are appearing in public for thefirst time. We invite you to experience Masako Ando's rich narrative world of living creatures that breatheand exude a charm that can only be appreciated by the naked eye.

[1] The Garden of Belly Button 2010
oil on canvas mounted on wood panel 190 x 140 cmⓒMasako Ando Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery

Like the internationally acclaimed artists Yoshitomo Nara and Hiroshi Sugito, Masako Ando (b. 1976)
studied under Nobuya Hitsuda. It was during this time that she began making paintings without regard forthe prevailing trends and fast pace of production, with her own sensibilities as her sole guide. As part ofher creative process, Ando meticulously collects and combines bits and pieces of memories, words andreality, carefully developing the ideas for her paintings. Because of the long gestation time of her works,

Ando has to date shown some 10 works and has participated in three exhibitions, including two groupshows and one solo exhibition at a gallery (2004). For the current solo exhibition, her first at a museum, atotal of 17 works will be on display, 12 of which were created after 2004.
Ando works in pencil and oil paints. In an age that offers a vast range of materials and methods, she
makes do with these two mediums alone. She lavishes equal adoration on her various motifs, all of which
are living things like children, animals, insects, plants and flowers. These things, which breathe and live inher paintings, cannot be encompassed in a single glance. Their surprising delicacy and subtle colors
become apparent only through close examination of the various nooks and crannies within the picture
plane. Each item is painted with equal affection, passion and concentration.
Pencil drawings, the artist says, allow her to ″engage my feelings with ease.″ Images are set as they flowout from her fingertips. For her oil paintings, drawings serve as a base over which she lays down opaquelines and multiple transparent glazes as part of a dialog with the color image. She uses a brush or thepalm of her hand to spread the pigment thinly and sandpaper to polish the surface until it is as smooth asporcelain. Ando's superb technical skills allow her to imbue her subjects with a textual quality that gives
them a striking realism. And yet the polished surface eliminates all traces of the artist's hand, thepigment's physicality and other signs of tangible rawness, to impart an intangible, imaginary quality to theimage, like that of a reflection in a mirror. In her paintings, this is the interval between reality and unreality
in which Ando searches for moments that gives rise to pictures.
The name of the exhibition, The Garden of Belly Button, is also the name of an exhibited work. The title,Ando says, expresses a place ″where something on the verge of being born permeates the air.″ At theHara Museum, originally a private residence, the memories of many people precipitate within its spaces
and small creatures and plants breathe within its gardens. Like the paintings of Masako Ando, it is a placefilled with things on the verge of being born, a birth to be triggered perhaps by an encounter with the visitor.
The things depicted in Ando's paintings are no mere icons. They have a power to draw the viewer into aworld that is meant to be ″experienced.″ We invite you to come feel this power.
[Exhibition Details]
Title: Hara Documents 9 Masako Ando: The Garden of Belly Button
Dates: Thursday, July 12 – Sunday, August 19, 2012
Place: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (Galleries I, II and III)
4-7-25 Kitashinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0001 Tel: +81 3-3445-0651
E-mail: info@haramuseum.or.jp
http://www.haramuseum.or.jp http://mobile.haramuseum.or.jp (Mobile site)
http://www.art-it.asia/u/HaraMuseum/(blog)
Organized by: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
Supported by: Hara Museum Supporting Membership
Special cooperation provided by: Tomio Koyama Gallery
Hours: 11:00 am – 5:00 pm, Wednesdays until 8:00 pm (last entry 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (open on July 16), July 17

Admission: General 1,000 yen; Students 700 yen (high school and university) or 500 yen (elementary andjunior high); Free for Hara Museum members, students through high school every Saturday during theschool term; 100 yen discount per person for groups of 20.
Directions: 5 minutes by taxi or 15 minutes on foot from JR Shinagawa Station (Takanawa exit); or fromthe same station take the Tan No.96 bus, get off at the first stop (Gotenyama), and walk 3 minutes.
Related event: Meet the Artist: Saturday, July 14, 2:00 – 3:00 pm (in Japanese only)*Also on view: Selections from the Hara Museum Collection (Galleries IV and V)[Points of Interest] This is the first solo exhibition at a museum featuring the small but rarefied output of a highly gifted
artist

A total of 17 works (9 oil paintings and 8 pencil drawings) will be displayed, including 12 created since
her first solo exhibition in 2004.

This is a rare opportunity to view first-hand the material quality of Masako Ando's paintings whichcannot be conveyed through a printed reproduction.

[Artist Profile]
Born in 1976 in Aichi prefecture, Ando received a BA (1999) and MFA (2001) from the Aichi Prefectural
University of Fine Arts and Music. She had her first solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2004. In2009, she was invited to participate in the group exhibition Little Playground - Hitsuda Nobuya and His
Students at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Nagoya City Art Museum. She currently lives andworks in Nagoya. http://www.tomiokoyamagallery.com/artists/ando[What is Hara Documents?]
Hara Documents is an exhibition series launched in 1992 for the purpose of cultivating and promoting
emerging artists and curators. Its goal is to introduce talented young individuals pursuing creative
activities in a variety of genres not limited to the field of fine arts. Artists featured in the past include MiranFukuda (1992), Kazz Sasaguchi (2002) and the doll designer Namie Manabe (2002). Hara Documents ismade possible by the generous support of Hara Museum Supporting Members. This latest installment is
the first to be held in 10 years.
[Images for Publication]* The image on the first page constitutes the main visual of the exhibition.
* Please include the following credit along with the captions below. Information related to material andsize may be omitted in case of space limitations.
* Please do not trim or alter the images. Putting text over the images is also prohibited.

[2] Hybrid 2008 pencil on paper 84.5 × 84.5 cmⓒMasako Ando Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery[3] Sphinx 2007 oil on canvas mounted on wood panel 99.7 × 120.0 cm
TAKAHASHI COLLECTION ⓒMasako Ando Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery

[4] Dragon´s Back 2007 oil on canvas mounted on wood panel 120.3 × 130.0 ㎝ⓒMasako Ando Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery

For publicity materials please contact the Hara Museum (Junko Watanabe, Yasuko Kajita) at
Tel: +81-3-3280-0679 Fax: +81-3-5791-7630 E-mail: press@haramuseum.or.jp
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art 4-7-25 Kitashinagawa, Shinagawa-ku Tokyo 140-0001