Kyoko Ishikawa examines language through sculpture and sculpture through language in a practice that is decidedly post-conceptual. While her grammar and vocabulary are mannered, the work is contemporary to a degree rare amongst artists practicing in Japan today.

Ishikawa delights in form and consequently insists upon taking a direct and honest approach to its examination. This results in an exhibition in perpetual process, yet one which never feels unfinished. In a way, Ishikawa has managed to suspend time, or at least absorb time into the form of the exhibition in a way that genuinely circumvents the standard four-week exhibition period. This suspension is achieved through Ishikawa's intensely sensitive respect for and use of materials, and this extends to the gallery space itself. If one is willing to engage the installation on its own terms -- to avoid an obvious initial classificatory response (which would read the room as full of scraps) -- then the reward is a renewed sense of wonder at material and its form.

An anti-illusionist, Ishikawa hints at a magic beyond material; in various elements of the installation, matter seems, at first glance, to behave contrary to its nature ...yet in every case, upon further examination, facts reveal themselves. For example, a horizontal wooden plank seems to float against an adjacent wall, suspended only by a tripod unable to support an object of such length; however, upon closer examination, hinges and screws are visible under the plank, connecting wood to wall. Yet surprisingly, an initial sense of wonder is not dispelled and one does not feel tricked, as the point of the entire installation seems to be an exploration of possibilities -- including those of illusion and imagination. As nothing is hidden, as long as one engages the project's form with the same honesty as the artist herself does, illusion retains its integrity as one thing amongst many.

Delicate detail is available in an abundance difficult to recount ...but inverted graphite puckers dotting the gallery wall, a deferred film projection, a single yellow foam ball resting beneath a bench, and a permanent marker held aloft by a single staple inserted into a narrow gap in the gallery floor come to mind ...as do a rock balanced upon a thin bar, and a plaster object resting upon a stubbornly solid mass of brown paper. Some, though (of course) not all of this material was found in the space prior to the start of Ishikawa's installation process.

What is made visible and tangible within the gallery.sora. space is Ishikawa's and the viewer's dialogue with material form -- a de-centered minimalism which extends the possibilities of sculpture. While Ishikawa's first, unofficial exhibition in the gallery (held in 2007) seemed a tentative step away from the painterly, yet still very much indebted to the form of painting-as-installation, the present exhibition seems a more positive step towards an honest engagement with materials. Ishikawa's process and development as an artist involves an engagement with objects and her present move closer towards "things" and away from their representation is a promising one. Seldom is a viewer provided with such a direct and provocative invitation to actively view and thus participate in the creative process.

(Disclosure: Though not the curator of the exhibition under review, Jeffrey Ian Rosen is a co-director of gallery.sora.)

Installation views at gallery.sora. Courtesy of the artist and gallery.sora. Photos: Takashi Orii © Kyoko Ishikawa 2008