Glenn Kaino

The chameleon-esque practice of Japanese-American artist Glenn Kaino utilizes sculpture, spectacle, video and performance to convey political restlessness and the uncanny blurring of news with fallacy. As a former street artist, magician, web designer, theatre producer and chief creative officer for the pioneering digital music startup Napster, Kaino has become celebrated for his re-combinative approach known as “kit-bashing.” Developing his practice at the height of the Internet boom, Kaino was part of a generation of artists who rethought the model-maker's process of assembling standard structures into hybrid forms. His 2014 installation Tank integrates fragments of a decommissioned military tank into a series of aquarium environments. This mid-career survey of the Los Angeles-based artist will span the last decade of his enigmatic work, including his collaborations with marine biologists, mentalists, gang members, chess players and – in his newest work which debuts in this exhibition – celebrity Japanese chef Niki Nakayama.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.