Kento Saisho. Things.

About

THINGS is Kento Saisho’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and features his newest series of vessels, sculptures and wall pieces created in steel. The exhibition’s title, Things, alludes to and is informed by the kinds of vessel-like forms that are the vestiges of the utilitarian objects and artifacts from antiquity, such as Chinese drinking vessels from the Bronze Age, excavated threadbare baskets, or cracked stone cuneiform tablets. All created in steel, Saisho’s work and the unconventional craft processes that he employs are material explorations in the medium.

The works in the exhibition are cumulatively made from almost 5,000 feet of steel rod that Saisho built up by coiling and welding together, inch by inch, to create organic volumetric forms. The heavily worked surfaces of these pieces are rough, highly textured and often striated, hearkening more to an object made of rough stone or ceramic than industrial steel. The repeated application of texture imbues the surfaces with themes of ritual, evoking the appearance of primitive objects that could be unearthed from a burial mound or dredged up from a shipwreck. Through this work, Saisho questions, “How can an object and material accumulate and reflect its history?”