Sébastien Kito

“Sébastien Kito is an artist of withdrawal. He is also an artist of lines, as his refined sculpture tends to become a simple vertical or curved line. Curved, in fact, because the world he draws is of the cosmic order. The earth is round, space is curved, trees are ellipses.”
Claude Mollard

Sculptor Sébastien Kito lives and works in Paris. Born of a French mother, and raised in France, Sébastien Kito has shown a desire to explore the culture of his other country, Japan, and has conceived an original way of thinking based on this confrontation of his dual origins.

Sébastien Kito first followed in the footsteps of his father Akira Kito, who was one of the most important Japanese artists in post-1945 Paris, and of his grandfather and great-grandfather, by studying painting. In 1985, he was admitted to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Hoping to recapture the spirit of the Cobra group in which his father had participated in the 1950s, he frequented Pierre Alechinsky’s studio. At the same time, he worked for Nouveau-Réalisme artists, notably Raymond Hains, whose assistant he became in 1983. Despite a strong family heritage and prestigious teachers, Sébastien Kito quickly found his own path, enriched by all these fruitful encounters.

His first projects were mobile screens with hollowed-out centers, and paintings on cut-out and articulated supports. The latter is the basis of his thinking, and serves as the foundation for a second major step, the design of giant hinges known as Extragonds.

Sébastien Kito is currently investigating form and color through mobile, articulated and hollowed-out sculptures, often bearing anthropomorphic or animal reminiscences. His sculptures are a playful invitation to join the space occupied by the work, or to transform it by moving one of the parts of the evolving structure.

These particular relationships between work and space are akin to the Japanese concept of Ma, which designates the spatial or temporal interval between two things, as important as the two elements that limit it. With the greatest apparent simplicity, Sébastien Kito succeeds in suggesting complex relationships or interactions between sculptures and space, between full and empty.

Solo Exhibitions

2011

Mémoire de l’oubli, Archie Yves Klein

2009

Ado/Kito, Les Cascades

2008

ArcelorMittal, Pavillon d’Esche

2006

Suez Environnement, 1 rue d’Astorg, Paris

1996

Arches, Galerie Satellite

1991

Paraventité, Galerie Pixi

1988

Paraventilateurs, MJC Issy-les-Moulineaux

Group Exhibitions

2025

Bursting with colors, Galerie Loft, France

Monumental, Sculpture Garden, France

2022

38th Contemporary Art Week, Mairie de Saint-Mandé

2016

Akira Kito, paintings, Sébastien Kito, sculptures, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, France

2011

Esprits des lieux, Fondation Eugène Napoléon

Dialogue CoBrA, Galerie Drylewicz

Since 2002

Galerie Scandinave

Since 1996

Galerie Satellite

Since 1991

Galerie Pixi

2006

K(Art)ma, Lille, France

2005

Gaël Train Station, Finistère — tribute to Raymond Hains (giant clothespin sculptures)

2004

Triptyque, Hôtel de Ville d’Angers (Galerie JGM)

2003

Artventure A3, Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris

Post Office Agency, Metz

2001

Symposium, Hôtel de Ville de Chantilly (Galerie JGM)

1999

Piano Hinge, stainless steel, 4 m, CNIT La Défense / ESSEC

1998

Mairie de Phalempin

1997

Bow Figure Exhibition, Do Well POWWOW, Tokyo, Japan

1996

Espace Culturel Agora

1993

Musée du Montparnasse

The Rule and Emotion, Musée de Campredon

1992

The Rule and Emotion, Musée de Campredon

Musée de la Miniature

1991

Artists’ Books and Objects, Galerie Natkin Berta, Paris

Jean Dupuy le Marché, Galerie J & J Donguy, Paris

1988

Gallery Reflex, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Mesa Verde Galerie, Luxembourg

1987

Galerie AA, Paris

École d’architecture UP7 Tolbiac, Paris

Hôtel de Ville de Voiron

Galerie Atelier, Paris

Monumental Sculptures

2006

Arbo, iron and aluminum, 3.14 m, private collection, Luxembourg

Nuage 2, glass and stainless steel, 2.53 m, private collection, Luxembourg

2005

Famille, iron and aluminum, 3 × 4 m, private collection, Luxembourg

Nuage 1, glass and stainless steel, 2.70 m, private collection, Ramatuelle

1999

Ganesh, painted steel, 3.5 × 6 m, private collection, Paris

1997

Giant Piano Hinge, raw steel, 3.10 m, private collection, Paris