Drifting Above Still Things
Works by Junko Yoda
Pricelist
Since childhood, Junko Yoda has liked to travel on maps. When she moved from Kagawa, Japan to New York City in 1969, the maps became real — Tokyo to New York, New York to Tokyo, countless times. Each flight became a source of inspiration: coastlines and cloud cover, the rhythmic abstraction of flight paths seen from above.
Much of her work has been made from two windows: one over Lower Manhattan, the other looking down from 30,000 feet. From the kitchen and the cabin, Yoda has developed a practice of patience and accumulated attention — painting and printing onto washi (mulberry paper), wetting it in the sink, layering it onto canvas with acrylic and ink.
Her large-scale works Shadows of the Clouds (2008) and River Source #4 (2006) translate this aerial view into material. A quieter counterpoint is her Lily's Corner series, drawn from the east-facing window of her SoHo studio, where a lily in a pot joined the view of Mercer and Howard Streets one day and became a continuous subject. From the opposite window she continues her TriBeCa Sky and Rear Window series.
Drifting Above Still Things brings together works made after 2000, tracing the quiet arc of an artist who has learned to find the infinite in what is close at hand, and the familiar in what lies far below.
Show dates: May 2 - June 25, 2026
Viewing hours:
Mon–Fri 9am–12pm
Sat 1:30–5pm
Sun 12–5pm
By appointment
Read: A Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without Walls
Toshihisa and Junko Yoda and their son, Yoichiro, have been making art in a 4,000-square-foot space on Mercer Street for 35 years, each following their own muse.
- New York Times, 2026.
Shadows of the Clouds (Reservoirs of N.Y.C.)
2008
acrylic and washi on wood panel
72” x 90”
$50,000.00
River Source #4
2006
acrylic and washi on wood panel
60” x 50”
$20,000.00
Small works
Size 8” x 10” & 10” x 8”
$800.00 each
Size 6” x 8 “ & 8” x 6”
$600.00 each
Size 5” x 7” & 7” x 5”
$400.00 each
Size 4” x 6”
$200.00 each
*not including NYC sales tax. Artist bio
Born in Tokushima, Japan in 1943, Junko Yoda studied at Musashino Art University in Tokyo before moving to New York City in 1969, where she has lived and worked for almost six decades.
Yoda's practice centers on landscape viewed from above — coastlines, rivers, and cloud cover rendered through a distinctive process of layering hand-colored washi (mulberry paper) onto canvas with acrylic and ink. In 2001, while completing a commission for the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, she developed a technique of dripping acrylic color directly onto washi spread across the floor, a method now central to her work. More recently, she has incorporated photo collage.
Her work is held in the collections of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ohara Museum of Art, the Takamatsu City Museum of Art, the Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Tottori Prefectural Museum of Art, and the Essl Collection in Vienna. She has exhibited widely in New York and Japan, including solo shows at Zabriskie Gallery and Gallery MC, and is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Holbein Scholarship Award.
Sales inquiry
If you’re interested in a piece, leave us a note below and we will get back to you within 48 hours