Ian Miyamura

"Stencil sketched the entire history of V. that night and strengthened a long suspicion. That it did add up only to the recurrence of an initial and a few dead objects."

—Thomas Pynchon, V. , 1963

Like a modernist writer shifting between epistolary, theatrical, and taxonomical registers in a contiguous narrative, Ian Miyamura pursues multiple styles across Novel, his first solo exhibition at Bel Ami. Here we find geometric paintings that feign symmetry, abstract compositions that dramatize the meeting of two arcs, text pictures that make puns, sunken relief sculptures describing receding chevrons, and keenly veristic tableaux populated by macabre miniatures from the British tabletop fantasy game, Warhammer (1983 – present). Is a plot concealed among these vespertine scenes and ordered characters? One senses a pattern, a point of unity where traces converge from seemingly opposed positions. If it could only be mapped out, would we at last reveal the mysterious force that turns the eras, furnishes one man with luck and a second with misfortune, and leads an empire to rise as another falls? In navigating Miyamura's gauntlet of false doubles, mixed symbols, aesthetic changeups, and collectible reliquiae, the viewer is converted into a detective—a gumshoe seeking clues to Novel's magnetic, warbling harmony.

Ian Miyamura (b. 1991, Kailua, HI) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2019) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013). Solo exhibitions include They Learned to Look Up and Down, Bureau, New York (2025); Chaos Spawn, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2024); Bureau at Paris Internationale (2023); and October 31, 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago (2022). Miyamura's work has featured in numerous group shows, such as The World Is The Work, The Drawing Center, New York (2026); Total Matters, The Meeting, New York (2026); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York (2026); Everything looks dark now, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2026); Fifteen-Year Anniversary Exhibition, Bureau, New York (2025); Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR (2025); Invisible Architecture, Ralph Arnold Gallery, Chicago (2023); My Condolences, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); and A Tournament of Lies, The Wassiac Project, New York (2022).