Kishio Suga

Tokyo Gallery＋BTAP in Beijing is pleased to announce that our gallery is opening an exhibition of works by Kishio Suga.

Kishio Suga is best known for his association with the art movement Moho-ha (School of Things), which emerged around the end of 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in Japan. The artist used natural and manmade materials such as wood, metal, stones, concrete, and plastic, which he would arrange on site without altering their form. He called the resulting scene “Situation (kei).” As is especially evident in his large-scale installations, Suga seeks to create a relationship between the objects and their surrounding space, combining different materials in bold and interesting ways.
Since 1976, the Tokyo Gallery has organized fifteen solo shows with the artist, each time with entirely new work. While Suga’s practice is diverse, incorporating a range of media which vary in scale and form, depending on the period in which they were created, the works reveal a sustained engagement with human perception throughout the artist’s career. This exhibition, Kishio Suga’s first in China, introduces his artistic practice over the years, with the majority of the works having been shown at Tokyo Gallery in the past.

The series PROTRUSION dates from the 1980s to the 1990s. At first glance, they look like straightforward paintings. Through various methods, however, such as incorporating negative space within the picture frame or adhering rectangular panels that protrude out from the surface of the picture, Suga explores the boundary between the objects and the space that surrounds them. Suga’s Airflow, created for his 2006 solo show, is an installation consisting of two thick wooden columns, which together support two layers of transparent plastic sheeting spanning the distance between them, over five meters. While the plastic barrier separates the space, the yielding quality of the material absorbs the viewer into the work, dramatically demonstrating the concept of space at the core of Suga’s practice.

Kishio Suga was born in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture in 1944. After graduating from the Painting Department of Tama Art University, his work has been the subject of many exhibitions both in Japan and abroad. Solo museum exhibitions include shows at the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2016), Dia Chelsea in New York (2016), the Yokohama Museum of Art (1999), and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1997). In January, 2016, he received the prestigious Mainichi Art Award and had an exhibition at the HangarBicocca in Milan, his first solo show in the Western world. This year, Suga’s work has been chosen for the 57th Venice Biennale exhibition Viva Art Viva, opening May 2017. We are expecting his continued success.