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 (1944, Morioka, Japan) lives and works in Itō, Shizuoka Prefecture.

His work is featured in many institutional collections, including the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, MD; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; He Art Museum, Foshan; Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka; Long Museum, Shanghai; M+, Hong Kong; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Pinault Collection, Paris and Venice; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Tate Modern, London; and the Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan.

Suga’s recent solo exhibitions include: Dia Beacon, New York; Where Both Sides Meet, Museum Cobra, Amstelveen, the Netherlands (2025); Existence Within Definite Contours, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2025); Corresponding Space, He Art Museum, Foshan, China (2024); Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2024); Johyun Gallery, Busan (2023); Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2022); Kishio Suga: The Existence of “Things” and the Eternity of “Site”, Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka (2021); Kishio Suga, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, Tokyo (2019); Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018); Dia Chelsea, New York, USA (2016), Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2016), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2015). 

Recent group shows include: Minimal, Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2025); Without Stars 2, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (2024); Building and Dreaming, BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou, (2022); Japanorama: New Vision on Art Since 1970, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2017) ; Minimalism: Space Light Object, National Gallery Singapore; The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1950–1970, Imperial Palace, Rio de Janeiro (2016); Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2016); Prima Materia, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2013); Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, The Warehouse, Dallas (2013); and Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012).