Tadashi Kawamata: Walkway

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. . . .

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”--such will be the nature of Kawamata’s new project this time. A walkway is an intermediate territory or threshold, a detour between two places, or else a contact zone. The art museum--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 will 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,” furthermore, they will observe people holding meetings, laboring, and engaging in dialogue, and may even find involvement 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.

The exhibition is curated by Fumihiko Sumitomo, SeniorCurator, MOT.

The concept book for this exhibition including photo documents of Kawamata’s projects, snapshot photos and sketches with surveyed biography and bibliography is published from Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, Ltd.

Tadashi Kawamata [Walkway] was organized by: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Under the patronage of : Embassy of France In cooperation with: Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd.

Tadashi Kawamata
Walkway
Kurator: Fumihiko Sumitomo