Akira Yoshikawa: Select Works

Curated by Bryce Kanbara

In early works, Yoshikawa laid out square areas – on slightly raised plinths or directly on the floor with sifted sand – upon which he placed spare arrangements of objects. Plaster casts of the hands of family and friends, carefully chosen found objects – such as a round rock, a branch, a piece of rice paper – served as simple homages to treasured people and as vehicles that convey his understanding of Japanese aesthetic principles. Recently, he has radically eliminated the framing devices and installed his objects in unbounded clusters for the viewer to encounter, unmediated, on the gallery floor.

In addition to the early works, the exhibition included several pieces from Yoshikawa’s exuberant sculptural "pilings" of commercial ceramic dinnerware and toy-sized figurines from 1996/97. Selections from his remarkable body of works on paper were also be exhibited.