Curated by Douglas Fogle and Hanneke Skerath
Winter 2020 the historic Neutra VDL Studio and Residences in Silver Lake hosted the work of artist Shio Kusaka in a project curated by Douglas Fogle and Hanneke Skerath. Responding to the unique architectural environment of Richard Neutra’s Los Angeles home and workspace, Kusaka quietly populated this iconic example of domestic mid-century modernism with her signature idiosyncratic ceramic vessels, small sculptures of animals, a new set of dinnerware and hand-crafted textile designs inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, Josef Albers and Ellsworth Kelly, respectively. Living and working in Los Angeles for the better part of the past two decades, Kusaka has spent her career subtly subverting the world of ceramics within the field of contemporary art. Enthusiastically embracing imperfections and irregularity in her ceramic-based works, Kusaka has approached her practice with a playful openness that is at once modest yet laced with wry humor.
Shio Kusaka was born in 1972 in Morioka, Japan and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her B.F.A. in 2001 from the University of Washington, Seattle. Collections include Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH; and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York; “Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood,” Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands (2017-18); and “Shio Kusaka,” Gagosian, Rome (2018).
A publication about the project is forthcoming and will be published by Blum & Poe.
