Kelly Akashi: Converging Figures

For the sixth edition of the Furla Series program, Fondazione Furla and GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Milan present Converging Figures a solo exhibition by Kelly Akashi, curated by Bruna Roccasalva.

The first exhibition dedicated to the artist by an Italian institution, the project presents a series of new works designed specifically to dialogue with the museum’s spaces and collection.

Kelly Akashi is a Japanese-American artist, born and raised in Los Angeles, whose practice is distinguished by her ability to reconcile a conceptual approach with an attention to form and process. Always carried out with great skill and a profound knowledge of materials, Akashi’s works explore universal concepts such as time and space, the impermanence of the natural world, the transience of the human body, and entropy. Attracted to materials like glass, wax, and bronze, Akashi shapes them by creating forms that reproduce natural elements such as plants, flowers, shells, or parts of her own body, recording their physiological changes and the passage of time. Juxtaposed in poetic compositions that often look fragile and precious, these familiar yet alienating forms explore existential questions, encouraging us to look at things from a different, broader and less anthropocentric perspective.

The project Converging Figures revolves around the concept and phenomenon of “reflection,” explored through a visionary path that winds its way right through the GAM’s permanent collection. The works on display, mostly produced for the occasion, are created in response to the context where they are displayed, and they fit into it in a discreet and quiet manner, integrating harmoniously with their surroundings.

There are thus many paths taken by Akashi to “reflect” the context in which she exhibits, with works that physically reflect the surrounding environment thanks to special techniques that make them mirror-like, and others that reproduce details of architecture or of a number of masterpieces from the collection, such as the Portrait of Countess Antonietta Negroni Prati Morosini (1871–1872) by Francesco Hayez, The Reader (1864–1865) by Federico Faruffini, and Faust and Margherita (The Kiss) (1861) by Antonio Tantardini.

Through a constellation of works that are formally seductive and technically rigorous, the exhibition thus explores the sedimentation of various temporalities and the layering of knowledge, lives, and generations, while presenting us with the coherence and complexity of research that orbits around the themes of memory, time, and tradition, yet which constantly evolves and develops in terms of form, technique, and material.

Kelly Akashi: Converging Figures is the upshot of the collaboration between Fondazione Furla and GAM: a partnership begun in 2021 to promote annual exhibition projects providing a unique opportunity for past masters and protagonists of the contemporary scene to come face to face. Furla Series is the program promoted by Fondazione Furla and realized in collaboration with Italy’s foremost museums, with an all-female program designed to valorize and showcase women’s fundamental contribution to contemporary culture.

For more info 
T +39 02 72237 235  / press@fondazionefurla.org