The art of Kinji Akagawa points up the difference between public and private space. In his bench Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking (1987), he creates a public place for activities that are normally private-a place where visitors can rest emotionally and psychologically as well as physically. In Table for Dialogue (1993-1994), made for this exhibition, he brings materials associated with the outdoors-wood, and stone-to an indoor space. And in Lap Boxes for Poets (1980-1981), he takes a kind of object designed as a container for inner thoughts and draws our attention to the ways in which it opens.

Akagawa, who lives in Minnesota, cites two major influences: the artistic traditions of his native Japan, where refined, highly crafted objects are made to function in people's everyday lives; and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose work explores the distinctions between pure perception and thoughts that are defined by language.
 
 

Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking
1987
granite, basalt, cedar

Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis