Kishio Suga

Kishio Suga is one of Japan’s most celebrated artists, whose diverse and influential practice spans site-specific installation, assemblage, and performance. His career began in 1968 when he started making temporary installations out of natural and industrial materials such as wood, metal, wire, and concrete. By introducing an incongruous yet defined structure of raw material into the gallery space, he sought to reveal the reality of mono (things/materials) and the jōkyō (situation) that holds them together. Suga was identified as a critical theorist within a loose group of like-minded artists that later came to be known as Mono-ha (School of Things). Though short-lived, this movement was a significant turning point in postwar Japanese art history, echoing the concurrent development of Land Art, Arte Povera, and Supports/Surfaces in the United States and Europe, yet rooted in a specifically Japanese intellectual and cultural context.

 

Kishio Suga (b. 1944, Morioka, Japan) lives and works in Itō.    

The artist’s work is featured in many institutional collections, including Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; Long Museum, Shanghai; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Pinault Collection, Venice; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Tate Modern, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; and Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama.    

Suga’s recent solo exhibitions include Kishio Suga, Dia Beacon, New York; Where Both Sides Meet, Museum Cobra, Amstelveen, the Netherlands (2025); Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2024); Paper, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2022); Kishio Suga: The Existence of “Things” and the Eternity of “Site,” Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka (2021); Gathered <Intermediates>, Tomio Koyama Gallery; Spiral Garden, Tokyo (2021); Released Scenic Space, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2020); Early Works, Gallery Cocon, Tokyo (2020); Measured Divisional Entities, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2019); Each Modern, Taipei (2019); Expanded Self- Space, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2018); Photography and Video, 8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2018); Released Existence on Edges, The Club, Tokyo (2018); Kishio Suga, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018).