On Kawara

On Kawara (Japanese河 原 温, Kawara On, January 2, 1933, Kariya, Aichi ) is a Japanese visual artist and representative of the concept art. He lives in New York. ( Other sources give the date of birth December 24, 1932. )

On Kawara reduced his conceptual work on a system that allows him to transform the temporal duration and physical residence of his life in art. A key theme of his art are time and temporality. On Kawara has created an extreme reduction in its work of contemporary art since the sixties. The constantly exploiting dividend traveling artist is neither interviews nor did he allow photos and never appears on the gallery openings of his exhibitions. Since the 1960s, his work has been exhibited internationally continuously in solo and group exhibitions. His works are in numerous public and private collections.

Artistic works

Today Series

On January 4, 1966 On Kawara created his first date painting and began a continuous, theoretically unlimited series Today, which includes over 2000 individual images.

A monochrome, sometimes red or blue, in most cases, however, darker Backgrounds, carries the in white acrylic paint painted on canvas date of the day on which the image was created. The date format corresponds to the country in the On Kawara has created the image. As far as the national language does not use Latin characters, the date format is adopted in Esperanto. The relevant date painting has one of eight specified formats ( 20.5 x 25.5 cm to 155 x 226 cm, 5cm deep). The images are always created in landscape mode.

Each Date Painting is located in a specially made, perfectly fitting box which in the early years there was at least the front page of a newspaper in the creation of tags. As a last work rule On Kawara has determined that an image on the day whose date it represents, can not be completed by him, will be destroyed.

The Date Paintings sit down - as well as many other works Kawara - significantly with the passage of time apart. Kawara said that his pictures were " a kind of meditation, an exercise that is useful to lose his ego. "

I READ, I WENT, I MET

As parallel work on the Today Series applies the work I READ. This he has started well in 1966. I READ is a series of notebooks, which contains newspaper clippings from the days on each of which a date painting was created. The clippings are taken from a newspaper out of the country in which the image is created. Here, the date of their visit is impressed.

The work I WENT is also a series of notebooks in which Kawara has recorded with red ink on the map sections its respective daily journeys.

In I MET On Kawara has to set down the names of people with the date of their visit provided typewritten notes that he knows and has taken within a period of 24 hours.

I GOT UP AT, I AM STILL ALIVE

In the period from 1968 to 1979 On Kawara has shipped under the Title I GOT UP AT every day to two different persons each have the same postcard. The map presented each represents the place where the artist was up to date. The card was in each case include the date, the lettering I GOT UP AT and the printed minutes exact time of getting up.

1970-1979 On Kawara is working on the series I AM STILL ALIVE, for he sent periodically to different, he knew people (mostly friends and colleagues) telegrams that had the content: "I AM STILL ALIVE. ON KAWARA ".

This work went ahead three telegrams from 1969, which he sent on the occasion of the exhibition 18 Paris IV.70 to Michel Claura, the exhibition curator. They had the following content: " 6 Dec 1969 - I AM NOT GOING TO COMMIT SUICIDE DONT WORRY ", " 8 Dec 1969 - I AM NOT GOING TO COMMIT SUICIDE WORRY " and "11 Dec 1969 - I AM GOING TO SLEEP FORGET IT ".

Further work

In addition, On Kawara has other work, such as One Million Years - Past ( 1969) and One Million Years - Future (1981 ), Code (1965 ) or Questions: ' Give Sentences ...' (1964 ) was created.

Exhibitions and exhibition participations ( among others )

• Tokyo Biennale (1970 ), Tokyo
• Kyoto Biennale (1976 ), Kyoto
• Venice Biennale (1976 ), Venice
• Documenta 6 (1977 ), Kassel
• On Kawara: continuity / discontinuity 1963-1979 (1980 ), Stockholm, food, Eindhoven, Osaka
• Documenta 7 (1982 ), Kassel
• Date paintings in 89 cities ( 1991-1993), Rotterdam, Hamburg, Boston, San Francisco
• On Kawara: One Thousand Days One Million Years ( 1993), New York
• Whole and Parts 1964-1995 (1996 ), Villeurbanne, Lille, Turin, Barcelona, ​​Tokyo
• Documenta 11 (2002), Kassel
• Museum of Modern Art ( MMK), Frankfurt am Main ( 2010), Exhibition: Radical Conceptual