Ashley Rawlings

KISHIO SUGA: WRITINGS, VOL. 2 (1980–1989)

Edited by Andrew Maerkle, Ashley Rawlings, and Sen Uesaki, this is the second of a three-volume anthology that makes Suga’s thinking accessible to English readers as a comprehensive body of work for the first time.

This volume collects Suga’s writings from the period 1980–89, when the Japanese art scene was transformed by a museum-building boom triggered by the country’s rise to unprecedented economic heights. Having challenged conventional definitions of art through his formulations of the “[thing]” and “being left” a decade prior, Suga shifts his focus in the 1980s toward working with the collective logic of the world. In particular, he embarks on a sustained investigation into the dynamics of “[periphery]surroundings” as the basis for an approach to artmaking in which subject and object are equalized and the marginal or unseen takes on as much significance as that which is centered or seen. Included here are the aphoristic fragments that Suga compiled for his retrospective monograph Kishio Suga, 1988–1968, short statements composed for exhibition catalogues, and long-form essays published in art journals and other magazines during the period, many of which appear in English for the first time.

Hardcover; 222 pages, illustrated in black & white and color
Texts in English
Published by Skira Editore, Milan and BLUM Books, Los Angeles, 2025
ISBN: 978-88-572-4785-4
24.4 x 17.4 x 2.3 cm

FEATURED WORKS

Photos:
Courtesy Gallery Saiensu, Morioka (top left); Kishio Suga (top right); and Tsuyoshi Satoh

EXTRACTS [PDF]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. KISHIO SUGA, 1988–1968 (RAWCOGNITIONS)

II. CATALOGUE STATEMENTS
- In-Progress Intensity (1981)
- Treatise on [Periphery]Surroundings (1988)

III. ESSAYS
- Richard Serra: Will to Stand (1983)