Human Documents ’84/’85-4

Kishio Suga

Kishio Suga was born in 1944, Iwate prefecture, Japan. Suga graduated from the Painting Department of Tama Art University in 1968. From the late 1960s onwards, he has been active as one of the central figures of Mono-ha, a sculptural and installation based art movement that emerged in the late 1960s. Through his practice of assembling natural, industrial or found materials into a room size installation piece, he intends to examine the relation between objects, space, and human perception in tandem to the surrounding environment. Suga’s solo exhibitions have been organized by numerous museums in Japan including Kishio Suga Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997; Stance, Yokohama City Museum, 1999; Uncertain Void: Installation by Kishio Suga, Iwate Museum of Art, 2005. His most recent solo show Situated Latency was held at the Contemporary Art Museum, Tokyo in 2015.

Susumu Koshimizu

Susumu Koshimizu was born in Uwajima in Ehime Prefecture in 1944. He enrolled in the Department of Sculpture of Tama Art University in 1966 and left school due to student protest in 1971. Koshimizu became a prominent artist in the Mono-ha movement from the 1960s, creating minimal sculptures and installation pieces from basic materials such as iron, wood and paper. He was a faculty of the Department of Sculpture at Kyoto City University of Arts from 1994 to 2010, and currently serves as a president of Takarazuka University. He is now based in Kyoto, Japan. Koshimizu participated in various international art exhibitions including Tokyo Biennale: Man and Matter, Venice Biennale and São Paulo Biennale. He is a recipient of numerous awards in Japan including the prize at 3rd Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition held at Suma Palace Garden, Kobe (1972); Prize for Excellence, 11th Teijiro Nakahara Award (1980); 10th Denchu Hirakushi Prize (1981); 38th Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize for Freshman (1988); 2nd Kyoto Culture Prize (1989); Prize for Merit, Kyoto Prefectural Cultural Award (1999); 2nd Enku Garden Award (2003); Medal with Purple Ribbon (2004).