For the sixth edition of the program Furla SeriesFondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano – announce “Converging Figures“, a personal exhibition of Kelly Akashicurated by Bruna Roccasalva, open until December 8, 2024.
The first exhibition dedicated to the artist by an Italian institution, the project presents a series of new productions specifically conceived to dialogue with the spaces and the collection of the museum.
Kelly Akashi is an American artist of Japanese descent, born and raised in Los Angeles, whose practice is distinguished by the ability to reconcile a conceptual approach with an attention to form and process. Always executed with expert manual skill and a deep knowledge of materials, Akashi’s works explore universal concepts such as time and space, the impermanence of the natural world, the transience of the human body and entropy.
Attracted by materials such as glass, wax and bronze, Akashi shapes them creating shapes that reproduce natural elements such as plants, flowers, shells or parts of his body,
recording their physiological changes and the passage of time. Juxtaposed in poetic compositions that often appear fragile and precious, these familiar and at the same time alienating forms explore existential questions, encouraging us to look at things from a different perspective. different, broader and less anthropocentric.
The project that Akashi has imagined for Furla Series revolves around the concept and phenomenon of “reflection”explored through a visionary path that winds through the permanent collection, creating a dialogue and synergy with the architecture and masterpieces of the museum.
The exhibition of Kelly Akashi is the sixth edition of the Furla Series projectand is the fruit of the collaboration between Fondazione Furla and GAM, a partnership that began in 2021 to promote annual exhibition projects that offer a unique opportunity for masters of the past to meet with contemporary protagonists.
Furla Series is the project that since 2017 has seen Fondazione Furla committed to the creation of exhibitions in collaboration with important Italian art institutions, with an all-female program designed to give value and visibility to the fundamental contribution of women in contemporary culture.
Kelly Akashi was born in 1983 in Los Angeles, where she lives and works. She recently concluded a major solo exhibition, Formations, which traveled to the San Jose Museum of Art, the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2022-2024), and was accompanied by the publication of the first comprehensive monograph on the artist. Other major solo exhibitions include: Encounters, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2023); Cultivator, Aspen Art Museum (2020); a thing among things, ARCH, Athens, Greece (2019); and Long Exposure curated by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter, New York (2017). She is the recipient of the MOCA Distinguished Women in the Arts Award (2024), the LACMA Art + Technology Grant (2022), and the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize (2019). Her work is included in the permanent collections of major international institutions including: Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and San Diego; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford; CC Foundation, Shanghai; X Museum, Beijing; The Perimeter, London; David Roberts
Carlo Franza