After graduating from Graphic Design department of Tama Art University in 1997, Mika Ninagawa has won numerous awards, including the 26th Kimura Ihei Award in 2001. She has held more than 80 solo exhibitions both in Japan and abroad, and received acclaims worldwide for her photo book Mika Ninagawa (Rizzoli N.Y., 2010). In recent years, she has broadened her scope of activities to film direction of “Sakuran” and “Helter Skelter”, and collaboration work with the fashion brands such as Celine and mastermind JAPAN. She is one of the most successful photographers at work today. She has held many exhibitions including two concurrent solo exhibitions in Taipei last year and “Daido Moriyama x Mika Ninagawa” at Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyoto. Also, she had a solo exhibition, “MIKA NINAGAWA EXHIBITION” at Urasoe Art Museum in this February and a photo exhibition, “PLANT A TREE” focusing exclusively on cherry blossoms at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Kiyosumi, Tokyo in this April.

This exhibition will feature the works from four series: “Acid Bloom” and “Liquid Dreams” (2003), “floating yesterday” (2004) and “noir” (2010). The subjects of her works such as flowers, animals, goldfish and scenery have the brilliant colors that arouse deep emotions and take us into a world which seems strangely unreal. The colors are permeated with light, and Ninagawa has continually experimented with light and color in order to grasp the richness and beauty of life. By strengthening of the light and the depth of color, “brilliantly colored darkness” comes up, and whether enclosed in light or wrapped in shadow, the subject of Ninagawa’s work is seen as an exuberance of life, an instantaneous beauty able to be shown only within the particular world she creates.