2023 Catalogue Archive

Chewing gum stuck to a pink glass leaf with half of a friendship necklace wrapped around the tip: the three elements in Kelly Akashi’s evocative sculpture all, in their own way, hint at a fleeting awareness of time. Known for mixing technically demanding materials like glass and bronze with ephemeral found objects, Akashi’s unique approach connects the personal to the universal, and the temporary with the (seemingly) infinite. As the title suggests, Seismogram hints at motion, change, and fragmentation that occur on the small scale of the individual and the grand scale of nature. Currently, Akashi has a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego entitled Formations. In 2020, Akashi had a solo exhibition of a commissioned sculpture, Cultivator, at the Aspen Art Museum, and in 2017, she had a significant solo exhibition, Long Exposure, at SculptureCenter in New York. Akashi’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum; LACMA, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; CC Foundation, Shanghai; and X Museum, Beijing, among others.