“I dream my objects before I build them.”
— Kiyoshi Toussaint
Born in 1985 in the rusted heart of Buffalo, New York, to a Japanese mother and Belgian father, Kiyoshi Toussaint spent many mornings staring at the towers of Bethlehem Steel from the window of his tiny bedroom.
“By the time of my birth, Bethlehem Steel had already been closed for three years,” Kiyoshi tells me. We’re sitting in a coffee shop in the blue-collar town of Lackawanna, the epicenter of Buffalo’s long-ago steel industry collapse. Kiyoshi is one of the very few successful artisans still living in the Buffalo region—a distinction he claims with pride.
“Shifting Permanence”. Silver, hawthorn, white oak, steel.
“The decay of those steel towers stoked my imagination,” he continues. “I’ve always been attracted to things falling apart: the way materials corrode, the crumbling of structures. What many people consider ugly, I consider beautiful. A rose is cliche, a sunset is cliche, but slime mold…” He smiles. “Slime mold is infinitely variable and I suppose that’s what I find most beautiful. The same with rust, how it seems to have its own consciousness, it’s own ‘journey’ across the metal. Of course I realize how esoteric this all sounds, the artist droning on about his art.” Now his smile fades into sheepishness. “But discussion of any aesthetic sensibility descends into the abstract. Maybe it’s best we move on.”
For all his modesty, Kiyoshi Toussaint is one of the world’s most celebrated metallurgists, a wunderkind in a field not known for its wunderkinds. Kiyoshi received dual Ph.D.s in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from the California Institute of Technology, studied Japanese sword-making at the prestigious Oku-Iwakuni Workshop in Kyoto, and won Venice Biennale's Golden Lion for his sculpture made of pure iridium, titled “Lost Morning.” All this before his 30th birthday. Now on the edge of forty, Kiyoshi believes he’s getting close to truly understanding what it means to be a novice.
“At the risk of sounding disingenuous, I consider myself a beginner. I used to be afraid of self-analysis, as though it would ruin my ‘instincts.’ There are many projects I want to start, many interesting clients I’d love to work for, and I’d be doing them a disservice if I continued to approach my craft in such an amateurish manner.”
“Amateurish” isn’t a term one associates with Kiyoshi, who believes a careful balance of intuition and intentionality is crucial for success in any field.
“I adore formal repetition,” he says. “The old ways of apprenticeship, which, if properly applied, produces artisans who combine formality with a vital subconscious. Picasso had it, Rodin had it, Lorenz Helmschmied had it. In my own small way, I’m trying to keep my subconscious accessible. I dream my objects before I build them. My waking self reverse engineers what my subconscious has already constructed.”
“I’m prepared to become an apprentice to myself,” he continues. “This, I believe, will be the real work."
Kiyoshi’s collaboration with Piermont & Thorne on his Future Tense collection is, as he sees it, the first step in transitioning from novice to apprentice. Each Box is the result of experimental metalworking techniques, involving the integration of unusual materials. “I discovered how to reduce hawthorn to its nano components—as one example—and combine it with silver without affecting the conductivity, which, I’m told, is a crucial part of ensuring the malevolent force remains trapped.”
“Terminal”. Titanium, steel, silver, salt.
Does he believe his Boxes harbor imprisoned demons? When asked, Kiyoshi remains non-committal.
“This might sound like I’m being evasive, but I’m a strict materialist, which isn’t to say I doubt the existence of phenomena beyond the limits of what we can measure. It simply means I’m not concerned with it. My focus is on the quantifiable. Now, if you felt like teasing me, you’d point out my obsessive pursuit of what I consider beauty, which is only quantifiable to the perceiver—hardly an objective criteria.”
I consider teasing him but I can see he’s eager to return to his studio, which he converted from his childhood home after his parents died in a car accident soon after Kiyoshi turned twenty. He blew out the small living room and installed a wall of windows from floor to ceiling, affording him a grander view of his favorite steel towers, decaying in their own beautiful way.
Kiyoshi Toussaint’s
Future Tense collection
will be available in late 2024.