SOME HELPFUL VOCABULARY

Photogram - a picture produced with photographic materials, such as light-sensitive paper, but without a camera.

Chromogenic - denoting a modern process of film developing that uses couplers to produce black-and-white or color images of very high definition. They are composed of three layers of gelatin, each containing an emulsion of silver halide, which is used as a light-sensitive material, and a different dye coupler of subtractive color which together, when developed, form a full-color image.

crystallography- the branch of science concerned with the structure and properties of crystals

ABOUT THE ARTIST

In her sculptural practice, Akashi utilizes indexical materials to emphasize the impressionability and physicality of objects. Often pairing delicate hand-blown glass or hand-made wax candles with bronze casts of her own hands, the artist captures momentary gestures, casting them into perpetual existence. Her interest in the mapping of time has led her to study fossils from extinct species in order to locate humankind amongst other consciousness that have thrived along the earth’s geological timeline. Drawing attention to the fluidity and interconnectedness of the media she uses, Akashi aims to capture the tension and physicality of objects in her practice.

Material tactility, its possibilities, limitations, and transformation form the core of Kelly Akashi's practice. Originally trained in analog photography, traditional processes and the materiality of documents continue to inform and fuel her sculptural explorations. Working in a variety of media, such as wax, bronze, fire, glass, silicone, copper, and rope, Akashi investigates the capacity and boundaries of these elements and their ability to construct and challenge conventional concepts of form.

Born in 1983 in Los Angeles, Kelly Akashi currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. The artist graduated with a MFA from University of Southern California in 2014. Akashi studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2006.

The artist has presented solo projects at Aspen Art Museum (2020) and the SculptureCenter, New York (2017). Other notable group exhibitions include the Clark Art Institute (2021); Hammer Museum’s biennial, Made in L.A. (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (2017); The Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Can’t Reach Me There, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2015). Winner of the 2019 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize the artist had a residency at the foundation in Ojai, California. Other residencies include ARCH Athens, Greece (2019) and at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2019) - both of which concluded with a solo exhibition.

Kelly Akashi’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; CC Foundation, Shanghai; X Museum, Beijing; The Perimeter, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Sifang Museum, Nanjing, among others.

EXCERPTS FROM X-TRA "REACH INSIDE".

Kelly Akashi interviewed by artist David Muenzer

"Weep (2020), a cast bronze orb trickling with water, holds the center of the first room, the pitter-patter of its drips echoing in the white cube. Flanking the fountain are a series of turned-wood pedestals, whose undulating spindles take their shape from the artist’s echocardiogram patterns. These support casts of Akashi’s hands which variously caress, hold, and penetrate a complex array of organic glass forms—bubbles, spirals, and webs. Upstairs, branching glass sculptures are suspended from the ceiling with knotted rope, and a table displays a family of Murano-inflected ersatz Venuses below a hanging bell." ...

" DAVID MUENZER: Your sculptural hands, accentuated by these elaborate pedestals and each making contact with a glass object—they dramatize both the gesture of the touch and the specifics of what is being touched. What were you thinking about with that spiral shape in Wielded Whorl (2020)?

KELLY AKASHI: I’ve been making various spiral forms for a long time, and I think that comes from the candles, making very erect candles in the beginning and then making them more flaccid. Recently, I’ve thought about different kinds of support. The spiral is something that’s porous, that allows for movement, that meanders. But it also has a lot of structure. And then, separately, thinking about models or illustrations of time. In school I used to draw this little figure—instead of the person moving, the time was moving through the person. Now I’ve been thinking about a way to structure time where it’s self-reflective, where it acknowledges past and future in the same moment. The spiral is a good illustration of that, since it folds back on itself even though it still has a directional movement. Now I think, of course, those candles were always that, with their twists.

DM: I remember you wrapping the candles around the copper tubing (Downtime Machine, 2017), and it became very animal, like a creature from the Precambrian period. There are so many possible evolutionary configurations for propulsion. I like thinking about how the notochord, which became the root of all vertebrates, was just a blip among the diversity of life before a mass extinction made it the dominant form. I think your earlier work with shells, from your 2019 exhibition at François Ghebaly, brought up that kind of morphological introspection.

KA: Yeah, spirals are mystical, ancient: shells, galaxies. For that show, I was researching shells and how they are built. I love that shells have an architectural component—they are homes. And the body of the shelled creature moves, so the shape includes past inhabited spaces.

DM: Were you looking at brachiopods?

KA: Yeah, I was looking at brachiopods and whelks. I chose four distinct species from a few different areas that I thought would articulate the spirals in different ways.

DM: In a tree, when a new branch comes out, is that called a node? When I saw these, I was thinking about coral. They bud. The biological analogies are profligate here.

KA: Definitely. I had someone come into the studio once and ask if the leaves in an older work were like fingernails, and I really liked that! It’s so obvious, but I think that often the cells can rest between antlers, coral, tree branches, fire, flames. What all these things share is more important than any one reference—how something might spread out and populate, for instance.