EX­hi­Bi­tion

KISHIO SUGA: WORKS ON PAPER

Kishio Suga is one of the defining artists of Japan’s Mono-ha movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for site-specific installations of industrial and natural materials like wood panels, metal sheets, stones, and concrete blocks arranged in various configurations, which he terms “situations” or “scenes.” Alongside this practice, Suga frequently experiments with paper, which he uses to explore the overlaps between two and three dimensions. Through repetitive processes of collaging, layering, cutting out, and pasting, Suga heightens the materiality of the paper—to the extent that it even begins to take on spatial effects. This exhibition showcases the significance of paper in Suga’s oeuvre through a selection of works of diverse scale and form spanning from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP

Tokyo Gallery was founded in 1950 as the first contemporary art gallery in Tokyo. In 2002 the gallery opened a new space, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, in Beijing’s 798 Art District, and it now operates as Tokyo Gallery + BTAP. Over the course of its history the gallery has introduced Western avant-garde artists such as Lucio Fontana, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Yves Klein, and Jackson Pollock to Japan. It has also supported experimental projects by some of Japan’s most important artists, including Taro Okamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, and Jiro Takamatsu as well as key figures associated with Mono-ha like Lee Ufan and Kishio Suga. In the 1970s the gallery began working with Korean artists, such as Kim Whanki and Park Seo-Bo, and in the late 1980s it started exhibiting then-unknown Chinese artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang and Xu Bing. Carrying this spirit forward, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP continues the mission of discovering and promoting both established and rising artists while regularly participating in international art fairs and working closely with museums and biennale exhibitions.