On Kawara was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in New York from 1965 until his recent death in June 2014.
If you are discovering the work of On Kawara, you will probably think that he was obsessive and tormented. Who is able to send a postcard everyday during ten years just to say the hour at which he woke up? Or to write a daily telegrams during years to say that “I Am Still Alive”? Who is able to list with a writing machine each year for the one million-year period leading up to the artwork’s conception and the million years that follow it? On Kawara’s work engages the personal and historical consciousness of place and time. The artist did during all his career a huge reflexion about the passage and marking of time. The work of On Kawara is worrying and disturbing because it remembers us the insignificance of our lives.
Organized with the cooperation of the artist, On Kawara—Silence will be the first full representation of Kawara’s output, beginning in 1964 and including every category of work, much of it produced during his travels across the globe: date paintings (the Today series); postcards (the I Got Up series); telegrams (the I Am Still Alive series); maps (the I Went series); lists of names (the I Met series); newspaper cuttings (the I Read series); the inventory of paintings (Journals); and calendars (One Hundred Years and One Million Years). The exhibition will also present numerous drawings produced in Paris in 1964, which are fascinating proposals for unrealized works; and Kawara’s only two extant paintings of 1965, Location and Title, which herald the Today series.
This exhibition is an unique opportunity to discover the entire work of a huge conceptual artist.
“One Million Years”
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Guggenheim will organize a continuous live reading of the artist’s One Million Years, the steady recitation of numbers from a vast ledger, which will be performed on the ground floor of the Guggenheim rotunda.
“I Got Up” postcards serie
Where: Guggenheim Museum – 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street) – New York, NY 10128-0173
When: from February 6th to May 3rd, 2015
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About Astrid Jacomme
Cuando tuve que decidir que hacer con mi vida, decidí hacerme... Química. Curiosa elección. Pero a decir verdad, si no hubiera estudiado química, habría sido fotógrafa. O periodista. O crítica de arte. O quizás presidente del club de fans de Radiohead. Me apasiona la música, el arte y la fotografía en particular... y me encanta escribir para compartirlo.
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