Kishio Suga Space - Order 1974; printed 2006 © Kishio Suga; photography © Sam Kahn; Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

Biography

Born 1944
Nationality Japanese
Birth place Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, Japan

Kishio Suga uses everyday materials, including rocks, pieces of wood, wire, paraffin, stones – in fact, almost anything to hand, both natural and manufactured – to create what he calls ‘situations.’ Bringing materials together, often in apparently random combinations and configurations, Suga aims to highlight their physical qualities, interdependent relationships and their connections with the surrounding environment. The artist moved to Tokyo in 1964 to enrol at Tama Art University, where he studied oil painting. Upon graduation in 1968 he became associated with the group of Japanese and Korean artists collectively known as Mono-ha (School of Things). These artists rejected traditional representational art in favour of ephemeral and site-specific installations, which were in part physical and material responses to the rampant industrialisation of post-war Japanese society. Suga’s solo exhibitions and retrospectives include the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (1997), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2015), Dia: Chelsea, New York, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, (both 2016). The artist lives and works in Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.