Westside, Los Angeles
Kenzi Shiokava
Spiritual Material
Otis Ben Maltz GalleryBen Maltz Gallery continues the Otis College celebration of its centennial year with a solo exhibition of work by esteemed artist and alumnus Kenzi Shiokava. Los Angeles-based, Brazilian-born Japanese sculptor and assemblage artist Kenzi Shiokava (Otis MFA '74) has been making work for over fifty years. His totemic wooden sculptures are carved from discarded and found natural materials, while his assemblages are reanimated objects - ephemera from previous lives. Shiokava's work seeks to manifest the spiritual aspects of natural and man-made materials through a physical reshaping. Shiokava moved to Los Angeles from Brazil in 1964 after visiting his sister and began taking art classes at Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) and later received his MFA from Otis College. He settled in the neighborhood of Watts, just as the riots of 1965 broke out. Both Shiokava and his work are tied to an important and historical conversation with other assemblage artists connected to the Watts Art Center like John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar. Throughout art school, Shiokava worked as a gardener and landscaper, and it was through this work that wood became an important material for him. In the '90s Shiokava moved into his current studio in Compton, which holds hundreds of found and gifted objects, natural materials, and curious debris; there is even a garden where he grows trees and plants to use in his sculptures. His hand-carved totems and assemblages collaboratively address concerns of the perseverance and visibility of the human spirit. Life, death, rebirth, and associations with the sacred can be detected within every hand-carved contour and elegantly placed object Shiokava handles. We are pleased to present Shiokava's work as part of our Centennial exhibition championing esteemed Otis College alumni.