Kenzi Shiokava

For 50 years, Kenzi Shiokava's sculptural practice revolved around a central preoccupation: the recovery and transformation of castoff materials. His studio—a cavernous warehouse in Compton and an artwork in and of itself—brimmed with items salvaged from secondhand stores, the street, and the shore: action figures, telephone poles, and driftwood among them, all awaiting reincarnation as wooden totems and assemblage. Through intuitive acts of carving and arranging, the artist unearthed what he described as the "inner movement" of everyday objects, revealing their spiritual vitality and reinvigorating them with life. Kenzi Shiokava is the artist's first solo museum exhibition, gathering over 50 sculptures made across five decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s. The presentation is anchored by two core bodies of work: abstract totems meticulously carved from wood and enigmatic box installations animated by toys, dried plants, and stones. The exhibition underscores the transcultural nature of Shiokava's practice, which melds the aesthetic sensibilities of wood carving in Japan, assemblage in South Los Angeles, and multiple belief systems, including Candomblé, Catholicism, and Zen Buddhism. Deeply attuned to his materials, Shiokava allowed them to guide his sculptural process, which he compared to archeology—both patient practices of excavation, recovery, and revelation.