"The freestanding paintings in this series operate somewhere inside the void between illusory and three-dimensional space. I am interested in how making simple interventions to a flat panel, such as cutting and folding, can create opportunities for some surfaces to hide while others are revealed in a painting. Since there is no front and each painting has four or more planes, only fragments of the whole can be seen from a single position. By eliminating a forced point of view, I look to better understand the perception of space by combining flat planes that imply depth with physical shifts that occupy an actual area."
-JJ Miyaoka-Pakola
JJ Miyaoka-Pakola received his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 1999 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009. Miyaoka-Pakola’s work has been written about in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Artfile Magazine, New American Paintings, and the San Francisco Arts Quarterly. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Chashama Exhibition Grant in 2014, and a Visiting Artist Fellowship to be an artist in residence at the Montana Artist Refuge in 2011. Solo exhibition venues include Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, Chashama 461 Gallery, New York, NY, and Lloyd Dobler Gallery, Chicago, IL. Group exhibition highlights include “A Tribute to Asian American Art and Cultural Expressions” at the De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, “Residual Volume” at Harbor Gallery, New York, NY, “Image Machine” at the Roger Brown Study Collection, Chicago, IL, and “Mechanical Turk” at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design. Miyaoka-Pakola lives and works in New York.