Kelly Akashi’s Converging Figures @ Fondazione Furla and Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano
A Japanese-American artist based in Los Angeles, Kelly Akashi is renowned for her meticulous engagement with glass, bronze, wax, and photography. Her practice explores impermanence, memory, and transformation, often drawing from personal, generational, and biological histories. Converging Figures, presented as part of the Furla Series at Fondazione Furla and GAM, curated by Bruna Roccasalva, offered a rare opportunity to see Akashi’s materially rich, deeply personal practice in conversation with historic European art, situating her work within a broader sculptural lineage.
Installation view, Fiori da Ballo (Entwining Flora). 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
Call it intuition or admiration, but when I first encountered Kelly Akashi’s work, I felt compelled to follow where it would take her next. Shortly after, she joined Lisson Gallery, marking a significant new phase in her career, and I had the privilege of speaking with her in 2023. A conversation that left me thinking about how her practice engages with impermanence and history. So, despite the demands of my studies, I took the time to fly to Milan in early 2024 to see Converging Figures—her first solo exhibition in Italy—unfold in the historic halls of GAM—Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano. At the time, I saw it as a meditation on materiality and lineage. Now, in retrospect, it feels like a prelude to something more.
Months later, as wildfires swept through Los Angeles, Akashi lost both her home and studio. The destruction was a stark reminder of the fragility and transformation she has always explored in her work. And yet, her practice remains unwavering. Now, with her inaugural solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery Los Angeles coinciding with Frieze Los Angeles, it feels like the right moment to revisit Converging Figures—a show that, even before these events, spoke to cycles of preservation, decay, and endurance.
Space and Historical Dialogue
The exhibition opens with Converging Figures (2019), a foundational work that establishes themes of reflection and transformation. A contorted glass limb juxtaposed against oxidised bronze sets up a dialogue between fragility and endurance—a dynamic that reverberates throughout the show. Installed within GAM’s historic architecture, Akashi’s sculptures converse with the museum’s classical masterpieces and ornamental interiors, embedding ephemeral, organic forms within the weight of history.
Installation view, Converging Figures, 2025. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
This sensitivity is particularly evident in Parnassus Garland (2024) and Fiori da Ballo (Entwining Flora) (2024). The former, a borosilicate glass wreath, mirrors the garlands adorning the Sala del Parnaso, while the latter, a sprawling floral installation, echoes the ballroom’s parquet flooring and ceiling stucco against the backdrop of Northern Italy's most precious jewel, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's The Fourth Estate (1901).
Installation view, Fiori da Ballo (Entwining Flora), 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
La Lettrice (The Reader) (2024) extends this engagement further, reinterpreting details from Federico Faruffini’s La Lettrice (1864–65) by translating the painting’s hand gesture, bottle, and chalice into reflective bronze and glass.
Installation view, La Lettrice (The Reader). 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
Reflecting on a conversation I had with Akashi in 2023 regarding her exhibition Formations, she remarked on the challenge of modern commercial spaces compared to historical sites:
"In a historical environment, I don’t challenge history; I embrace it and give it space to just be. Modern commercial spaces are more difficult because they allow for many possibilities. Historical spaces, in their limitations, allow me to tune in and highlight them with sensitivity. Boundaries can be tools."
It is intriguing that we had discussed this very idea of exhibiting in a historical space, and in 2024, it materialised in Milan. Seeing Akashi’s principles unfold in real time reinforced the depth of her practice. Converging Figures does not merely occupy GAM’s space; it actively responds to it, weaving a dialogue between past and present. This project establishes a synergy between Akashi's new works and the museum’s architecture and permanent collection, enriching the visitor’s visual and conceptual experience. The exhibition is not simply placed within the institution—it embeds itself into its material and historical fabric, reinforcing Akashi’s sensitivity to context and site-specific engagement.
Materiality as Metaphor
Akashi’s practice foregrounds the poetic potential of materials—glass, bronze, wax, and cast forms—as vessels of presence and transformation. Her engagement with glassblowing, a process demanding both precision and surrender to unpredictability, becomes a metaphor for corporeal vulnerability. In Hand Impression #17, the molten glass captures an indexical imprint of touch, speaking to both preservation and decay.
Matter, memory, and reflection underpin works such as Mirror Complex (Villa Reale) (2024), where Akashi transforms photographs of Villa Reale into reflective surfaces through a specialised printing process. The result is a visual doubling—both fixing a moment and dissolving it into an ever-changing reflection. Similarly, Elemental Entwine (2024), a marble sculpture where water creates a mirrored surface, reinforces Akashi’s fascination with material and temporal dualities.
Installation view, Mirror Complex (Villa Reale). 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
Installation view, Elemental Entwine. 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
The Body in Absentia
Akashi’s treatment of the body is fragmentary, resisting the impulse toward total figuration. Rather than presenting complete figures, she focuses on isolated impressions and anatomical traces. The dismembered hand—a recurring motif—becomes a metonym for touch, intimacy, and loss, recalling classical sculptures of antiquity. Yet, instead of idealising the form, Akashi emphasises its vulnerability.
In Daisy Oracle for Weeping (after Il bacio) (2024), she engages in a nuanced dialogue with Antonio Tantardini’s Fausto e Margherita (Il bacio) (1861), reinterpreting the tragic love story through bronze hand casts arranged in a silent elegy. Modeled after her own hands, these self-portraits chronicle the passage of time, reinforcing her preoccupation with bodily impermanence.
Installation view, Daisy Oracle for Weeping (after Il bacio). 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
Temporal Poetics: Casting and the Archive
Time—both as material and metaphor—is central to Converging Figures. Akashi’s use of candle wax, which melts, re-solidifies, and erodes, functions as a contemporary memento mori, embedding cycles of deterioration within the sculptural process. In these explorations, the objects bear the weight of absence and historical trauma.
Her May 23–25, May 23–26, June 20–23, June 29–30, July 22, and July 23–30 (all from 2020) series, comprising bronze and crystal castings of half-melted candles, references her transition from photography to sculpture. These works encapsulate her enduring preoccupation with capturing time through media that oscillate between preservation and decay, evoking a visceral connection to human transience.
Installation view, May 23–25, May 23–26. 2020. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
Furthering this theme, Merletto Ritratto (Lace Portrait) (2024) incorporates lace handcrafted by a local artisan, replicating the lacework from the dress of Countess Antonietta Negroni Prati Morosini in Francesco Hayez’s Portrait of Countess Antonietta Negroni Prati Morosini (1871–72). By transposing its delicate intricacy into bronze, Akashi preserves the textile’s form while altering its materiality, reinforcing her ongoing investigation into historical continuity and transformation.
Installation view, Merletto Ritratto (Lace Portrait). 2024. Photo Courtesy: Alice Ji-Won Kim.
The interplay between transparency and opacity—glass and bronze, wax and metal—suggests an ontological meditation on presence and disappearance.
Akashi’s sculptural inquiries align with contemporary dialogues on material agency, memory, and transformation. Her use of cast objects and site-specificity evokes parallels with artists who similarly navigate historical legacies through sculptural interventions. Yet, Akashi remains tethered to the personal—her own body acting as an archive of time’s insistent imprint.
Converging Figures does not merely invite historical reflection; it insists on the body as a living, breathing archive of interwoven pasts. As Akashi enters this next phase of her career, she continues to push the boundaries of materiality, memory, and form. Through her breathtaking compositions—delicate yet resolute—she affirms herself as one of the most visionary sculptors of her generation.
Kelly Akashi’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery Los Angeles runs from February 20 – March 29, 2025, at 1037 N. Sycamore Avenue, Los Angeles.
Alice Ji-Won Kim
Interviews Co-Editor, MADE IN BED