ARTCOURT Gallery is pleased to present Twiggy Project, a solo exhibition of new works by sculpture artist Keiju Kawashima.

With glass blossoms that shine on delicate branches of stainless steel and the appeal of a slender silhouette, Twiggy (2016-) is a sculpture that was made for a journey of creating encounters with people. The artist who has come to the gallery with Twiggy in hand will transform the gallery space into a vessel as if arranging flowers, and bring the works to life. The artist has planned a project in which he will continue on a journey with his work, while reaching each destination by relying on the various relationships, exchanges and bonds that were born from that place. In Spain and Italy, there are already people awaiting the arrival of Twiggy.

For the beginning of this Twiggy Project, all 30 pieces from the Twiggy series all be arranged in the courtyard space, and will be waiting for visitors to see the clusters of their flowers of light in full bloom. Inside the gallery space, many of Kawashima’s newest works will also be presented, such as his paintings and Twiggy Snip Lamp, a work inspired by cut flowers.

The physical constraints born from the characteristics of various elements will influence the formation of the thing as a whole, causing its form to change.
I am seeking out this feeling that the idea of the details governs the design as a whole.
–– Keiju Kawashima

Keiju Kawashima has been highly acclaimed since the 1980s, being selected for “Art Now” and “The Suntory Prize”, and was a forthcoming artist of the Kansai New Wave movement with his organic large-scale sculptures created from a combination of different materials. Kawashima deals with, or rather he continues to challenge himself with the constraints of materials and environments as opportunities for new discoveries and formal development when producing work. In addition to classic sculpture mediums such as stone, wood, glass, metal (bronze and iron), he began using colorful polyethylene as a material in 2000, and in recent years he has been developing a series of works that combine stainless steel and glass and uses primitive plants and unknown organisms as motifs.

While making work with a variety of materials for about 30 years, he found even more new possibilities in the way relationships between people and places are built up together with the artwork, and in 2016, Kawashima began his idea for the Twiggy Project. With the concept of taking artwork on a journey, he sought a unique design that could make the stem and flowers of the pieces compact to be more easily transported and to have more flexibility when exhibiting them to fit a space. He continued to improve upon Twiggy while producing and exhibiting them. Not limited to places specialized for art, Kawashima plans to make Twiggy an artwork that can be enjoyed anywhere from a street corner in the city or deep in the mountains, all around the world. Here begins Keiju Kawashima’s challenge of setting out on a journey to broaden the places where art exists in the real world.