Kishio Suga
09 Feb - 01 Mar 2008
KISHIO SUGA
Suga is one of the artists of Mono-ha, a movement that swept the Japanese art world during the 1970s and 1980s. After studying with Giju Saito at Tama Art University, Suga began using various methods to combine wood, stone, metal, and glass, and deployed these combinations in exhibition spaces.
We can perceive a piece of wood on many levels - from its surface to its cross section, from the whole to only a part, from its silhouette to its cellular makeup. In some sense, the wood doesn't even exist until we perceive it. In a single stone pulses the logic of countless stones. A cosmos dwells within every piece of matter. Suga draws out these hidden currents and unites them, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict, and opens up a light, free-flowing channel within the space. With a consistent focus on our surroundings, Suga brushes aside our constant search for symbolic meaning in the things we see and conjures unfamiliar relationships between things. Via everyday stuff, he raises the curtain on a new world, and in liberating us from usual habits of thought, gives us a fresh set of eyes.
On two gallery floors, we will present an entire body of Suga's new works, made between 2007 and 2008.
The most prominent feature of this exhibition is the artist's deliberate use of color. Through expanses of vivid color interrupted by painterly depressions, created with a grinder, on large wood panels, his new Complexification series radiates tension. Including sculpture and drawing, nearly twenty new works will be on display.
We urge you to take this opportunity to see the fruits of Suga's recent experiments.
Artist profile
Suga was born in 1944 in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture. He graduated in painting from Tama Art University in 1968. For forty years, since his first solo show in 1968 to the present, Suga has participated in numerous exhibitions.
Large-scale solo exhibitions among these have been: Uncertain Void : Installation by Suga Kishio (Iwate Museum of Art, 2005); Kishio Suga?Stance (Yokohama Museum of Art, 1999); and Kishio Suga Exhibition (a traveling exhibition: Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Itami City Museum of Art; Kanagawa Prefecture Gallery; Chiba City Museum of Art, 1997). This is his second exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery since his first in 2006. He has also been active internationally, showing at The 38th Venice Biennale in 1978 (Japanese Commissioner: Yusuke Nakahara); Japon de Avant Gardes 1910-1970, (Le Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1986); and Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky, (Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan; Guggenheim Museum, Soho, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994) among many other exhibitions.
Suga's works will be part of the permanent collection of the Soko Gallery, which opens this August at the Daikokuya Hotel in Itamuro, Tochigi Prefecture.
Suga is one of the artists of Mono-ha, a movement that swept the Japanese art world during the 1970s and 1980s. After studying with Giju Saito at Tama Art University, Suga began using various methods to combine wood, stone, metal, and glass, and deployed these combinations in exhibition spaces.
We can perceive a piece of wood on many levels - from its surface to its cross section, from the whole to only a part, from its silhouette to its cellular makeup. In some sense, the wood doesn't even exist until we perceive it. In a single stone pulses the logic of countless stones. A cosmos dwells within every piece of matter. Suga draws out these hidden currents and unites them, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict, and opens up a light, free-flowing channel within the space. With a consistent focus on our surroundings, Suga brushes aside our constant search for symbolic meaning in the things we see and conjures unfamiliar relationships between things. Via everyday stuff, he raises the curtain on a new world, and in liberating us from usual habits of thought, gives us a fresh set of eyes.
On two gallery floors, we will present an entire body of Suga's new works, made between 2007 and 2008.
The most prominent feature of this exhibition is the artist's deliberate use of color. Through expanses of vivid color interrupted by painterly depressions, created with a grinder, on large wood panels, his new Complexification series radiates tension. Including sculpture and drawing, nearly twenty new works will be on display.
We urge you to take this opportunity to see the fruits of Suga's recent experiments.
Artist profile
Suga was born in 1944 in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture. He graduated in painting from Tama Art University in 1968. For forty years, since his first solo show in 1968 to the present, Suga has participated in numerous exhibitions.
Large-scale solo exhibitions among these have been: Uncertain Void : Installation by Suga Kishio (Iwate Museum of Art, 2005); Kishio Suga?Stance (Yokohama Museum of Art, 1999); and Kishio Suga Exhibition (a traveling exhibition: Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Itami City Museum of Art; Kanagawa Prefecture Gallery; Chiba City Museum of Art, 1997). This is his second exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery since his first in 2006. He has also been active internationally, showing at The 38th Venice Biennale in 1978 (Japanese Commissioner: Yusuke Nakahara); Japon de Avant Gardes 1910-1970, (Le Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1986); and Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky, (Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan; Guggenheim Museum, Soho, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994) among many other exhibitions.
Suga's works will be part of the permanent collection of the Soko Gallery, which opens this August at the Daikokuya Hotel in Itamuro, Tochigi Prefecture.