Kenzi Shiokava

Nonaka Hill Los Angeles presents an exhibition focused on Kenzi Shiokava’s small-scale sculptures, the second project since the gallery began working with the artist’s estate. Produced over the course of his career, the “box works” represent a key facet of Shiokava’s studio practice. Fashioned from cast off crates, file boxes, estranged cabinet and desk drawers wherein rocks, shells, and children’s toy figurines are meticulously placed. In some works, objects are arranged in categorical style, reminiscent of specimen boxes; others have a more playful effect, theatrical dioramas played out by a cast of toy soldiers, action heroes, and familiar cartoon characters. Each work functions as a miniature world in itself, a theatrical tableau, an unsolvable Dada-ist rebus puzzle. Kenzi Shiokava was born in 1938 in Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, Brazil, to parents who had immigrated from Kagoshima, Japan. After spending his early adulthood in São Paulo, Shiokava departed in 1964—narrowly evading the military coup d’état in Brazil—and relocated to Los Angeles just months prior to the 1965 Watts Rebellion. He earned a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) in 1972 and an MFA from the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in 1974 before spending the next five decades working in Los Angeles. He served as a longtime artist-in-residence at the storied Watts Towers Arts Center, where his peers included artists John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar.

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