Kishio Suga. Situations

“Situations” is the first
European retrospective dedicated to Kishio Suga (Morioka, Japan, 1944). For the
first time in the career of this pivotal figure in contemporary Japanese art,
over twenty of his installations, dating from 1969 to the present, are shown
together in the Navate space.

Kishio Suga was among the prime
movers of Mono-ha, an artistic group born in the late 1960s. He began showing
his work at a time of great cultural ferment in Japan and international
experimentation, marked by movements like Postminimalism and Land Art in the
United States and Arte Povera in Italy. 

“Situations” brings together a
series of pieces the artist has adapted to the industrial architecture of
Pirelli HangarBicocca. Forging an intense relationship with the vast spaces of
the Navate, it unfolds along a single path that balances lightness and gravity,
linearity and tension, solidity and intangibility. In keeping with his
practice, Suga’s works are presented here as temporary projects which exist for
the duration of the show, site-specific in both a spatial and temporal sense.

The exhibition highlights the
common threads and experimental nature of the artist’s oeuvre, presenting a
landscape of organic and industrial elements—iron, zinc, wood, stone, and
paraffin—materials which he often finds on site. At Pirelli HangarBicocca, the
pieces therefore take on new qualities and characteristics that differ from
previous versions.