Yasuo Yoshikawa, sculptor, installation artist and art project organizer, was born in 1959 in Otsu, Japan. Growing up in a family where three generations lived together, he was deeply influenced by his grandfather Sekikazu Nishimura, a pastor, diplomat and human rights activist. Strongly attracted by the art of Marino Marini and by the Mediterranean mentality for which he felt an affinity, Yoshikawa spent a year in Perugia, Italy, and in 1981 entered Geneva University of Visual Arts where he studied sculpture under Professor Gabriel Stanulis. Works of that time include Nostalgia, an imposing outdoor installation figuring a gigantic stone lifted into the air by stainless cables stretched over a meadow, realized for the Sculpture en Plain Air1984 exhibition in Lancy, Geneva.

After returning to Japan in 1984, he started teaching at Kyoto College of Art and Kyoto University of Art and Design and initiated projects under the topic Art-Society-Environment, a theme that would be crucial in his projects throughout his artistic career. After setting up his own workshop near Lake Biwa, he created a series of works in wood and black ink, among them the large scale The Last Supper, exhibited in 1989 at galerie16 in Kyoto. In 1990 he established the Biwako Artists’ Organization (BAO) with which he organized international art festivals on Okinoshima Island (1990) and in Katata (1991) while soliciting the active participation of local residents. In 1987 he became a member of the Kyoto Art Council, a think tank for the cultural development of Kyoto City, and in 1994 started Art Project Z&A with which he organized a Paris-Kyoto Art in Residence Exchange between Z&A and the Parisian art group Le Genie de la Bastille involving more than sixty artists. Works he created in that period include the series Offerings which deal with the question what kind of ‘altar’ is built and what kind of ‘offerings’ are made by contemporary society.

Do we offer our time, our person, our planet, our fellow humans? Do we offer them to work, to money, to society, to our ideas? In 1995, the disastrous Kobe Earthquake provoked a new direction in Yoshikawa’s work. After volunteering in Kobe he decided to use his technical and social skills as a logistician for Doctors Without Borders and took part in aid projects in Kosovo, Congo and the Caucasus. Back in Japan and feeling the need for a place for communication in a more and more virtual society, he created ATHA Alternative Space Bar&Gallery in the heart of Kyoto, a space that fosters interest in the Arts and encourages communication between people of all walks of life, a project he describes as a ‘social sculpture’.

The artist has held exhibitions in Italy, France, Switzerland and Japan. The work Girovaganza Platonica, created for Scultura Internazionale ad Aglie 2008, invites the visitor to wander (girovagare) among the various -isms created by Men, and to reflect on the power the viewpoint has on mankind’s decisions regarding Nature.