Exhibition of Kishio Suga’s sculptures opens at Dia Beacon

Beacon, New York—The Dia Art Foundation is set to open a significant exhibition featuring the works of Kishio Suga on July 19, 2025, at Dia Beacon. This exhibition will showcase sculptures from Suga’s career spanning the 1960s to the mid-1990s, many of which have not been displayed in the United States before. In tandem with this exhibition, screenings of Suga’s film “Being and Murder” (1999) and videos of his performative “activations” will be held at Dia Chelsea from July 9 to August 9.

Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director, stated that “Kishio Suga’s practice is fundamental to the evolution of Mono-ha sculpture and offers critical insight into how space, material, and perception cohere.” She added that this exhibition aligns with Dia’s dedication to presenting influential international perspectives within postwar art.

Suga was a prominent figure in the Mono-ha movement in Japan during the late 1960s and early ’70s. This movement paralleled Postminimalism in the United States and involved artists working with natural and industrial materials in their unaltered states. These artists aimed to explore relationships between materials and their environments as well as perception itself. Suga describes his sculptures as “situations,” noting that “A situation is rooted in the breakdown of the already present system . . . it excludes all traits that can be imitated or duplicated.”

The exhibition will feature pieces from Dia’s collection along with key loans that use synthetic materials typical of urban experiences in the late ’60s. These include concrete, motor oil, paraffin wax, metal, and stone arranged in ways that challenge traditional expectations.

Among works from Dia’s collection are “Diagonal Phase” (1969/2012), “Abandoned Situation” (1971), “Placement of Condition” (1973/2016), and “Soft Concrete” (1970). Notable loans include “Parallel Strata” (1969), “Fieldology” (1974), and “Concealed and Enclosed Surroundings” (1997).

Curator Matilde Guidelli-Guidi explained that “Rather than conceiving sculptures as autonomous objects, Suga stages incongruous, at times absurdist sculptural situations that probe the unstable order of things.” His work involves deconstructing common materials outside their usual contexts.

Support for this exhibition comes from BLUM; Japan Foundation, New York; Johyun Gallery; Tomio Koyama Gallery; and Tokyo Gallery+BTAP. All exhibitions at Dia are funded by the Economou Exhibition Fund.

Kishio Suga was born in Morioka, Japan, in 1944. He graduated from Tama Art University with a BFA in oil painting in 1968. Over six decades he has created installations exploring formal and conceptual equilibrium. His work has been shown extensively in Japan and internationally.

Dia Art Foundation was established in 1974 with a mission to support ambitious artistic projects without traditional constraints. It operates several locations including Dia Beacon, Bridgehampton, Chelsea as well as numerous site-specific projects globally.