KOSHIMIZU Susumu
b.1944 Artist CV
KOSHIMIZU Susumu was born in 1944 in Ehime Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Sculpture Department, Tama Art University and later became one of the key members of Mono-ha, a group of artists who turned prominent in the late 1960s and 1970s. From early on, Koshimizu’s investigation of material and space resulted in some of Mono-ha’s most definitive artworks. Koshimizu’s installations and sculptures during the 1960s and 1970s focused on the qualities inherent to but not visible in an object. He shows concern for the materiality of objects—a desire to expose the fundamentals of sculpture, often revealed through juxtaposition. At the beginning of the 1970s, Koshimizu started to explore specifically the structure of surfaces.
The artist’s important exhibitions include Mono-ha, Fondazione Mudima (Milan, Italy, 2015); Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, The Warehouse, (Dallas, Texas, U.S.A., 2013); Century City Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern (London, UK, 2001); Matter and Perception: 1970 Mono-ha and the Search for Fundamentals, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan, from 17 Feb. to 26 March, 1995 (traveled to Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, from Aug. 19th to Sep. 24th; Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, from Oct. 7 to Dec. 17 and The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. In 1996, this exhibition traveled to Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saint-Etienne, France. Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, U.S.A.) (1994); 17th Sao Paolo Biennale (Sao Paolo, Brazil, 1983); 37th & 39th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1976 & 1980), and 7th Paris Youth Biennale (Paris, France, 1971).