Artists Space

Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts

Book Launch
January 24, 2024, 7pm

With presentations by Matt Connors, Jennifer Krasinski, Grace Rosario Perkins, Amy Sillman, Jordan Stein, Terry Winters, and John Yau.

Color image of a book cover, placed against a flat white background. The cover features an oil painting with gradients of red and green that make up geometric shapes which are stacked and placed in varying configurations.
Cover of Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts, Pre-Echo Press. (Miyoko Ito, Island in the Sun, 1978) [Color image of a book cover, placed against a flat white background. The cover features an oil painting with gradients of red and green that make up geometric shapes which are stacked and placed in varying configurations.]

Artists Space hosts a public event celebrating the release of Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts, the first monograph on Ito’s life and work, published by Pre-Echo Press. While Ito's lush and mysterious paintings were scarcely known outside her adopted home of Chicago, she was celebrated with a 2018 exhibition at Artists Space curated by Jordan Stein, editor of the new volume. The event includes an introduction by Stein, clips from a 1978 Ito interview with the Video Data Bank, and a series of short presentations by New York-based artists related to Ito's work, culminating in an informal panel discussion.

Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts is assembled by Pre-Echo Press, the publishing imprint of artist Matt Connors, along with Jordan Stein, who was the curator of Ito’s first two solo institutional exhibitions in nearly 40 years at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017 and Artists Space in 2018. The book features over 100 full-color plates gathered from the artist’s mature period, examples of Ito’s early works in watercolor, lithography, and oil, as well as archival materials, a 1978 interview with the artist, and a 5000-word essay by Stein.

Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. He is also the author of Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove, 2021). In 2017, he founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space in the Mission District dedicated to the presentation of critical and often overlooked artworks, histories, and ideas. He has independently organized exhibitions at venues such as Yale Union, Artists Space, San Francisco City Hall, The Glass House, Matthew Marks Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where he formerly served as Curator of Special Projects, as well as at BAMPFA. From 2016-2022 he was a curator at KADIST, San Francisco.

Amy Sillman is a painter who also writes about art as much as she can, which isn’t much because she’s such a slow worker. She comes from the Midwest but has lived and worked in nyc since 1975.

Matt Connors is an artist and publisher who lives and works in New York City and Los Angeles.

Grace Rosario Perkins is a self-taught Diné/Akimel O’odham painter. Recent exhibitions include The Relevance of Your Data (MOCA Tucson), A Mirror, A Window, A Songbird (Deboer Gallery, Los Angeles), and Hermit's Lamp (Cushion Works, San Francisco).

Jennifer Krasinski is a writer, critic, and frequent contributor to 4Columns, Artforum, and the New Yorker.

Terry Winters lives and works in New York City and Columbia County, New York. He has had one-person exhibitions at numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and the Kunsthalle Basel.

John Yau is a poet and critic who lives in New York City. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fiction, and art criticism.

Artists Space Venue is generously supported by Stephen Cheng, Lonti Ebers, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Allan Schwartzman, and David Zwirner.