To encounter wood, and to let their forces respond to one another.
Not to dominate nature, but to live in resonance with it.
We are pleased to present a solo exhibition by Yasutoshi Miwa, a wood artist based in Takayama, Gifu, Japan.
Miwa’s works are powerful, with a certain primal presence.
While they reveal the artist’s unwavering sense of purpose, they are never bound by a predetermined form.
Weathered wood, decayed timber, and beautifully spalted surfaces that resemble paintings created by nature itself—Miwa encounters each piece of wood as something with its own distinct character.
He traces the history held within the material and searches for the next form that could emerge from that particular piece of wood, and no other.
He carves into green wood, still rich with moisture, giving it form through his own intention and hand.
Yet the wood does not remain still.
As it dries, it shrinks, bends, warps, and sometimes cracks.
The forces held within gradually reveal themselves, quietly altering the contours shaped by the artist.
Miwa neither suppresses these changes nor leaves everything entirely to nature.
He acts upon the wood, receives the forces that return from it, and responds once again.
Behind this process lies years of cultivated skill and intuition, together with an experimental openness to outcomes that cannot be fully predicted.
Human intention and the laws of nature.
Control and chance.
Making and surrendering.
The time the tree has lived.
The changes that continue even after it has been cut.
And the will and hands of the artist who confronts them.
These different forces and different times meet, resist, respond, and transform one another, eventually coming together as a single work.
Perhaps what is inscribed in Miwa’s work is not a completed form, but the relationship itself—the encounter between nature and human hands.
