Whitestone Ginza New Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition“Prayer” of Miwa Komatsu. This is the first solo exhibition in 2020 at Tokyo by Miwa Komatsu who has designed this year’s charity T-shirt for 24 Hours TV. It would be our great pleasure if you could feel the world of contemporary artist Miwa Komatsu who has continued to draw “Prayer” paintings.

Born in Nagano in 1984. In her childhood, Komatsu had close contact with many living natures thanks to the rich natural environment: the experience of being present at their final moment led the artist to form her unique view of life and death, which linked to the peculiar style toward the beauty of death. Komatsu began copperplate engraving after entering Joshibi College of Art and Design. At the age of around 20, the work “ The Fourty- nineth day ” was appraised with its originality and it opened the way to be a professional painter. Starting from copperplate engraving, Komatsu has enlarged her ways of expression to acrylic paintings and even to Arita-porcelain in recent years. She has presented various works adopted themes such as death and the Gods who preside over it, holy beasts, Mononoke (supernatural beings) with strong embodiment of her performance. Komatsu realized consecutive solo shows at The Museum of Tetsu, Kitano Museum of Art Annex, and Ueda City Museum of Art, in her born-prefecture Nagano. In 2014, the artist dedicated her work to Izumo Taisha Shrine (the oldest shrine in Japan, considered as where the deity strongly dwells), which elevated her creational power all the more. In the same year, Komatsu collaborated with landscape artist, Kazuyuki Ishihara, and exhibited her Arita-porcelain guardian dog at the Chelsea Flower Show in London; the work won the prize and accomplished the splendid feat of entering into the collection of The British Museum. In 2017, her solo exhibition at Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho recorded circa 30,000 visitors. Komatsu has been active internationally versatile fields including addition of the work to World Trade Center in New York, exhibitions in Taiwan and Hong Kong, supplying the work to the movie, appearance in TV advertisement, just to name the few.