During his stay, Kirili visited the major museum collections in New York, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit, where he became interested in abstract expressionist painters.

Among other works, this show included a floor piece (Untitled, 1972; cut zinc sheet) which already contained many of the elements that would characterize his future practice.

[16] In his article, Lingaistics published in Art in America in 1982, Kirili evoked more specifically the sexual and repetitive aspect of these abstract and highly symbolic religious objects.

Art historian Robert Rosenblum perceived in this work a vertical force, familiar in the paintings of Barnett Newman, suggesting "a spiritually rather than materially assertive human presence".

Others, e.g. Untitled (1978) and Laocoon II (1978), both representative of this first series in forged iron, are now in the Nasher collection, Dallas, and the Fonds National d'art contemporain (FNAC), France, respectively.

This series of distinct geometric forms, which art historians have described as "mystical fonts" and "abstract alphabets", rises 15 to 35 inches above the ground and individual examples are composed of up to 90 elements.

[8] The forms of the elements in the Commandements series were influenced by his encounter, on New York City's Lower East Side, with the Torah calligraphers who trace their letters in the tradition of stone engravers.

[23] This series is concerned with the symbolic value of basic forms, and particularly with the world of glyphs, signs, and texts, in a way that evokes not only Kirili's fascination with ancient scripture, but also his ties to the Parisian milieu of writers and intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, and Julia Kristeva".

Rythmes d'Automne with its different elements, cast in a grey, pigmented concrete, invites the public into its 6,500 square feet wide space of signs in order to play, converse, dance, or meditate.

[25] Kirili constantly pursued an interest in abstract modeling, which resulted over the years in the creation of an entire body of work in terra cotta.

Art historian Kirk Varnedoe described these works as "heavily manipulated and often in rich fleshy tones, invested with more feminine form and with an altogether different energy",[29] especially compared to his forged iron pieces.

[32] Its surface is densely modeled and insistently abstract,[29] but nonetheless displays the "pleasure of rendering human flesh" as art historian Paula Rand Hornbostel put it.

[34] Initiated in 1984, Générations as Kirk Varnedoe suggested "brings together a complex array of individual smaller sculptures – pieces from the 'Commandment' series, and forged-iron works of various scales" in an approach of "formal unity".

[8] Art critic Philippe Dagen emphasized the "velvetiness and metallicness" of these aluminum pieces in his essay for the catalog of Kirili's solo exhibition at the Musée d'art moderne de Sainte-Etienne where he presented several of these sculptures, e.g. King I (1986) and Symphonie des Psaumes (1988).

From 2008 on, Kirili devoted himself to the creation of several series of organic wire sculptures, with partial rubber inclusions, in different colors, which he conceptualized as three-dimensional drawings.

[47] Art historian Thierry Dufrêne characterized this series as "giant drippings" because of their scale, spontaneity and rapid on-site installation, which is accomplished without any preliminary drawings.

Kirili reminds us that his first Commandements corresponded to his arrival in New York in 1979, when he dreamed of inscribing himself in the family of great abstract artists such as Jackson Pollock - to whom he renders homage with this new piece in front of Hôtel de Ville of Paris-or Barnett Newman."

Besides several of these shows having been conceived as dialogues with historical artists (e.g. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, among others), his work has also been exhibited in group or two person shows with more contemporary artists, notably Larry Bell, John Chamberlain, Ron Gorchov, Mark di Suvero, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, and Frank Stella.