Paul Thiebaud Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of works by Bay Area artist Mary Ijichi: Upon Reflection opens on Saturday, March 15, 2025, with a reception from 3-5pm and an artist talk at 3:30pm.  On view will be twelve of her signature Assemblage works, including a monumental tetraptych, her largest work in this series to date.  Constructed by applying colored pencil onto frosted mylar and attaching a painted mixed media structure behind it, Ijichi’s works employ subtle shifts of light, shadow, and color to create sublime visual experiences.  The exhibition will be on view through May 10, 2025. 

Requiring countless hours and attention to the smallest details, Mary Ijichi’s assemblages are formed through the layering of colored pencil rubbings on mylar over a field of carefully placed beads that are attached to a painted architectural grid.  What appear to be simple drawings at first glance, each Assemblage is a perceptual experience of shape and color that reacts to subtle changes of light.  While she has worked at the scale of one- and two-foot squares from the beginning of this series, Ijichi recently completed her first large-scale Tetraptych, comprised of four 24-inch square pieces hung in a grid.  For Ijichi, the creation of each piece exemplifies the search for simplicity and unity in a complex world.  Inspired by masters like Agnes Martin and Yayoi Kusama, Ijichi combines the principles of minimalism and the light and space movement, and filters them through the lens of eastern aesthetics, producing meditative moments of luminous calm. 

Born in Oakland, CA, Mary Ijichi first studied at the University of California Berkeley and later at the University of California, San Francisco, where she earned a Bachelors of Science degree.  Her works have been exhibited across the United States and in Japan, and can be found in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Oakland Museum of California, Yale University Art Gallery, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, among others.