ATHENS.- Tanya Bonakdar Gallery announced a thing among things, Kelly Akashi’s solo exhibition and artist residency at ARCH’s Athens. This is ARCH’s inaugural exhibition.

Informed by geological and material indexing, the works presented in the show bridge the artist’s ongoing research in transformation and documentation of materials and traditions embedded in the history of Greece.

Alongside her use of wax, bronze, stainless steel, and hand-blown glass, traditional Greek materials such as clay, terrazzo, fiber, and marble are utilized in non traditional ways, to index evidence of change. By embracing the language these culturally significant materials bring to her practice, Akashi generates a new hybrid vocabulary, creating an anachronistic landscape that points back to a fragmented figure moving through tactile surroundings.

Stemming from her studies in analogue photography, Akashi’s sculptures explore how the impact of time can be articulated materially. In her practice, materials embody the actions and experiences that form and inform them, while her camera-less photography aims to reveal the internal composition of the objects on view. These moments culminate in her energetic arrangements, directly creating conversations around the present by building on the past and pointing to the future.

Born in 1983, Kelly Akashi currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Akashi graduated with an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014. She also studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2006.

Winner of the 2019 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize, Akashi will present an upcoming solo exhibition at the foundation in Ojai, California, as well as at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2019). Other important solo exhibitions include Figure Shifter at Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles (2019) and Long Exposure curated by Ruba Katrib at the SculptureCenter, New York (2017). The artist’s work was featured in the Hammer Museum’s biennial, Made in L.A. (2016); other notable group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); LA: A Fiction, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (2017); Take me (I’m Yours), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann, and Kelly Taxter, Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Can’t Reach Me There, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2015). Kelly Akashi’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; CC Foundation, Shanghai; M WOODS, Beijing; The Perimeter, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Sifang Museum, Nanjing, among others.

Kelly Akashi, a thing among things, runs from June 19th to September 7th, 2019 and is accompanied by a fully illustrated bilingual publication featuring a conversation between the artist and Atalanti Martinou.