“Katsura Funakoshi: A Tower in the Night Forest”

Katsura Funakoshi was Japan’s representative at the 1998 Venice Biennale, and while he’s considered a major artist in his country, he isn’t well known here. A figurative sculptor who works primarily in wood, he crafts sublime, enigmatic busts of subjects who alternate between surreal, mythical beings possessed of an animistic presence and straightforward portraits of friends and acquaintances. Kissed by subtle glosses of color, Funakoshi’s objects are fashioned in an elegant, attenuated style of smoothed features that distantly recalls the work of early modernists like Elie Nadelman, especially in the way that Funakoshi imbues sophisticated forms with folk art guilelessness. This is the artist’s first show in NYC in 10 years and is definitely worth catching.