Los Angeles – “Witness” is a bronze cast of the lower half of the face of Kelly Akashi. The surface of sculpture (from 2024–25) has an irregular patina that is unexpectedly beautiful. It was one of the many elements in the current exhibition of the artist at Lisson Gallery That was found from the remains of its Altadena house and Studio, one of the thousands of structures destroyed during the recent fires Eaton and Palisades. A bright red glass shape seems to sprout from the face and resembles both blood vessels and the tendrils of a new plant.
This new oeuvre brings various threads from its previous pieces of interest in long-term, geological views over time (Longue Durée) And the use of hereditary objects as a way to understand the history of her family – together with the local and personal tragedy that the artist has experienced. Seeds and sprouts are prominent during the exhibition, where they weave a story about the imagination, building and cherishing new possibilities. Seeds contain the required components to grow into something much bigger. They keep the promise of new life, the promise of a future.
I was mainly fascinated by the enlarged cast bronze data seeddos that dot the exhibition. Electric wiring winds from these sculptures and tapered in spiky, seed -shaped lights. One of them is on the floor; This includes Ash, presumably from the Eaton Fire, which was removed during the installation on the gallery floor and settled on the gallery floor. “Devil’s Claw With Seeds” (2024–25) looks like a kind of alien skull, the horny protrusions that protect themselves and the seeds inside, against the outside world.
Delayed by the fires, the exhibition was opened on February 19, the 83rd birthday of Executive Order 9066who gave the forced internment of Japanese Americans permission during the Second World War. In earlier work, Akashi jewelry from her father’s grandmother took as a way to investigate the continuous impact of the internment of its grandparents throughout the entire generations. For this show, the artist concentrates her maternal origin and makes the use of lace pork that belonged to her mother’s side grandmother. Designs taken from these doilies are repeated during the exhibition, in particular as patterns laser in the corten steel skirts on which her sculptures rest. Richard Serra used the same type of steel; Here it is Akashi’s brutal way to literally cut women into a medium and canon usually associated with white male artists. Other sculptures are directly on top of these doilies, as if they want to acknowledge how the stories of our ancestors have set the fundamental conditions for our lived experiences.
“Monument (Shelter)” (2025) is the most important work of the exhibition. Two bronze hands, resting on the side of Akashi’s grandmother, hold a turquoise-colored seed pod. These hands – casts of the artist – cover and cradle the seed. Did they make it? Do they recognize it to us? Or do they protect the seed? Maybe all three can be true. For me, this is the central theme of the show – how our family history, communities and personal history help us to imagine, build and protect us for ourselves, even when external forces try to limit what is possible.
Both IJeoma Oluo And Adrienne Maree Brown Write about how limiting imagination is a tool of white supremacy. It is unable to imagine that new structures lock us within existing institutions and hierarchies, so that the progress limits to incremental changes within the same structures without ever going further. In the aftermath of local and personal tragedy, and in the midst of the unprecedented and systematic destruction of our government institutions, Akashi shows us the importance of what is perhaps the most basic function of art – the opportunity to present and create new possibilities, to see the potential future in a seed.
Kelly Akashi Continue in Lisson Gallery (1037 North Sycamore Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles) until March 29. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
