Bergman Family Galleries

Kenzi Shiokava is the first museum solo exhibition dedicated to artist Kenzi Shiokava (b. 1938, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, Brazil; d. 2021, Los Angeles), gathering over fifty sculptures made across five decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s. A second-generation Japanese Brazilian, Shiokava departed São Paulo in 1964—narrowly evading the military coup d’état—and relocated to Los Angeles just months prior to the 1965 Watts Riots. After earning a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) and an MFA from the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design), he spent the next fifty years working with found materials in Los Angeles while serving as a longtime artist-in-residence at the storied Watts Towers Arts Center, where his peers included assemblage artists John Outerbridge, Noah Purifoy and Betye Saar.

Through intuitive acts of carving and arranging, Shiokava unearthed what he described as the “inner movement” of discarded objects, revealing their spiritual vitality and reinvigorating them with life. Deeply attuned to his materials, which ranged from telephone poles to plastic toys, Shiokava allowed them to guide his sculptural process, which he compared to archeology—both patient practices of excavation, recovery and revelation. Reflecting the artist’s career-long embrace of wood carving and assemblage, the exhibition is anchored by two core bodies of work: abstract totems meticulously sculpted from wood and enigmatic box installations animated by miniature figurines, dried plants and stones. The exhibition also underscores the transcultural nature of Shiokava’s practice, which melds the aesthetic sensibilities of wood carving in Japan, assemblage in South Los Angeles and multiple belief systems, including Candomblé, Catholicism and Zen Buddhism.

Kenzi Shiokava is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator.