One work features pieces of felt arranged on the gallery floor; the other is composed of wooden tiles laid out on the floor around five rocks. Both are examples of deconstructive minimalism, made by artists of the same generation who lived over 6,000 miles apart. In an exhibition opening this month, Blum & Poe’s Tokyo gallery compares and contrasts these works created by American artist Robert Morris and Japan’s Kishio Suga, two important figures in minimalist sculpture.In bringing together these two installations, Blum & Poe intends to join the “wider efforts by museums and galleries to broaden the typically Euro-American-centric narrative of modernism through comparative surveys.”Morris is seen as one of the founders of American minimalism, alongside sculptors like Donald Judd. Following early work inspired by photos of Jackson Pollock and by the conceptual art of Marcel Duchamp, Morris moved on to the L-shaped sculptures and arrangements he is best known for, one of which was included in the first major American exhibition of minimalist art, “Primary Structures” at the Jewish Museum in New York, in 1966.Morris’s “Lead and Felt” was originally installed at New York’s Castelli Gallery in 1969. The version on exhibit at Blum & Poe is a reconstruction made by the artist in 2010.A continent away, Suga was also becoming known for arranged works and becoming an integral part of a burgeoning movement. After encountering minimalism and the work of Lee Ufan while at university, Suga found himself a key player in the Mono-ha (“school of things”) movement, examining the interplay of natural and manmade materials. These varied from the wood and stone used in “Parameters of Space,” Suga’s installation at Blum & Poe, to industrial materials such as light bulbs, glass, and metal.The show’s version of “Parameters of Space” is also a modern reconstruction—the original was created in 1978. This, however, is not the only characteristic the two pieces share. Both are concerned with themes such as boundaries and chance, as well as physical and conceptual deconstruction. Seeing them together expands our idea of what minimalism is and how its history and canon are informed by artists beyond the narrow scope of white Western culture.“Robert Morris and Kishio Suga” runs March 12-May 7 at Blum & Poe in Tokyo.
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