Tomio Miki (1937 - 1978)

Tomio Miki belongs to a group of visual artists working in the 1960s in Japan known as Obsessional Artists. Independent of established genres, their work is thought to stem from fantasies of fragmentation and endless repetition. Miki’s manifestation of “obsession” was the ear, making his first sculpture in 1962 and from then on producing hundreds of ears of various sizes and arrangements. This series drew the attention of Minami Gallery and Miki would go on to have two solo exhibitions there, in 1965 and 1972. Having received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation he moved to New York in 1971 where he continued to work until a drug addiction took hold causing him to virtually give up art and leading to his early death from a heart attack in 1978.