Tadashi Kawamata, People’s Garden, Documenta IX, No. 11, 1992, Annely Juda Fine Art.
Tadashi Kawamata, La Maison des Squatters, 1994, Annely Juda Fine Art. |
|
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
4-1-1 Miyoshi
Koto-ku, On Fukagawa Shiroyokan-dori Street
Tokyo
03-5245-4111
Tadashi Kawamata (Walkway)
February 9-april 13, 2008
Viewers, through their own movement, produce an exhibition that never ends. What do people look at, in what way? If there were a wall, how would it affect the flow of people? In a certain place, people collect, sit down, make discoveries …
Tadashi Kawamata is a walkway. Tracing Kawamata’s journey of the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2008, we see that his career has been a continuing attempt to connect-and be a walkway between art and the everyday.
To turn the art museum into a walkway is the nature of Kawamata’s new project. A walkway is an intermediate territory or threshold, a detour between two places, or else a contact zone. The art museum is something usually perceived as a storehouse or display area. By perceiving it as a walkway on which people come and go, how will Kawamata alter its spaces, its functions?
With this keyword, walkway as a lamp, viewers can survey the works he has created since his student days, including projects unfinished and yet to begin. As they come and go on this walkway. They will also observe people in meetings, laboring, and engaging in dialogue, and may even become involved in such activity. Tadashi Kawamata’s Walkway is the practice of reconstructing experiences related to everyday life. Working without beginning or end, he creates an autonomous place in order to work free from limitation by goals or norms.
Tadashi Kawamata was born in 1953. At the age of 28 he was chosen to be a participating artist in the Venice Bienniele. Having since taken part in Documenta and other international exhibitons, he has achieved high acclaim in Europe and internationally. Today he is an important artist and indispensible presence within a growing trend in art to value the production process and participation in Society and history.
Kawamata's work transcends the art contem and expands to fields such as architecture and city planning, history, sociology, everyday communication, and even medical treatment.
While an artist he served as the artistic director of the Yokohama Triennale in 2005 and undertook the planning of a large-scale international exhibition. |
