Exhibition
TADASHI KAWAMATA's Solo Exhibition :Kawamata Archive 2024
Nov. 8 (Fri.), 2024 - Jan. 19(Sun.), 2025
Art Front Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Tadashi Kawamata.
Date | Nov. 8 (Fri.), 2024 - Jan. 19(Sun.), 2025 |
---|---|
Hours | Wed. ~ Fri. 12:00 - 19:00 / Sat., Sun.:11:00 - 17:00 |
Closed on | Mondays, Tuesdays and New Year's holidays (Dec. 23 - Jan. 7) |
Talk Event (Japanese) | 2024年11月8日(金)18:30 - / 登壇者:工藤健志(田川市美術館・館長)x 川俣正 ※終了しました。 https://forms.gle/jUgwtMaD1QQ5RCHT9 |
Reception | Nov. 8 (Fri.), 2024, after the talk event (scheduled for approximately 7:30- p.m.) |
<Artist's Message>
About Kawamata Archive 2024
Previously, at Art Front Gallery, we held the annual year-end exhibition titled Kawamata Annual>, reflecting on the projects completed throughout the year.
This time, under the new title Kawamata Archive we will once again present an exhibition showcasing the year's activities through photographs, maquettes, models, and more. To ensure I don't forget, I would also like to create and present a detailed timeline that clearly outlines where and what I was working on during the year.
So, what kind of year has it been for me?
Tadashi Kawamata, October 2024
From "Annual" to "Archive".
Tadashi Kawamata has advocated the importance of documentation since the beginning of his career.
This exhibition is a “revival” of the “Kawamata Annual,” a document exhibition that Kawamata held at the end of each year from 1987 to 1991 at Art Front Gallery to summarize the year's projects, marks its return for the first time in more than 20 years. As can be inferred from the fact that the exhibition has been renamed the “Kawamata Archive,” in this age of instantaneous access to information from around the world via smartphones, there is an awareness of “systematization” as opposed to “presentation” of information. It is of course important to analyze and interpret “work-in-progress,” in which the planning, installation, and dismantling of a single project are considered as a single work, chronologically from the beginning to the end of the project. However, the maquettes and drawings in Kawamata's project are not mere “intermediate products”. All the products from the project process are equivalent, and each has its own strong specificity. For example, while the maquettes and drawings are grounded in their respective projects, they are reflect Kawamata's identity as an “artist”, which show Kawamata's flexible creativity and originality as well as his compositional skills using unequal angle projection, allowing him to construct a spectacular space on a flat surface or in relief. On the other hand, in the photographs and videos documenting the project, we can see Kawamata's presence blending in with his collaborators and opening up his creative activities to the community. Kawamata dynamically structures the “everyday” by staying close to the local culture and environment of each project site and the lives of the people living there. The situation of Kawamata's “artless” activities, in which Kawamata is objectified by sharing his sensory qualities with many people, will become clearer through the methodology of “archiving”.
In this exhibition, new works of “Tree hut” and “Nest,” which Kawamata has been working on energetically in recent years, will be installed outside the gallery. In the two exhibition rooms, there will be the maquettes for outside installations, a diary of activities in 2024 with photographs and Kawamata's handwritten notes, maquettes and models for “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024,” and artworks created at open studio in Echigo-Tsumari. In addition to those, materials from projects in Rokko, Sendai and Kyoto, as well as photographs and videos documenting the activities in 2024 will be exhibited.
The materials collected for each project are not related to each other as master and servant, but are all equivalent, allowing us to actively view them from our own perspectives. Therefore, by crossing multiple projects and accessing information at random according to the interests of each viewer, it is possible to derive a variety of contemporary issues. Like Kawamata's projects, this exhibition, which is the totality of Kawamata's systematized record of activities in 2024, also has a “participatory” and “openness” that welcomes diverse views, interpretations, and analyses.
【Takeshi Kudo】
Born in Fukuoka in 1967. Director of Tagawa Museum of Art from April 2024.
He worked as a curator at Tagawa Museum of Art from 1993 to 1998, and experienced Kawamata Tadashi’s project “Cole Mine Tagawa” (1996-2006) for several years from the beginning of the project.
He has been a curator at the Aomori Museum of Art since 1998, when the museum was in the preparation period for its opening, and served as the head of the art planning department at the same museum from 2022 to 2024.
The main exhibitions are “Tateishi Tiger” (1994), “Yamamoto Sakubei” (1996), “ROBOTS and the ARTS” (2010), “Bisyoujyo: Young Pretty Girls in Art History“ (2014), “The World of TOMINO Yoshiyuki” (2020), and “TIGER Tateishi: The Retrospective” (2021) etc.
About Kawamata Archive 2024
Previously, at Art Front Gallery, we held the annual year-end exhibition titled Kawamata Annual>, reflecting on the projects completed throughout the year.
This time, under the new title Kawamata Archive we will once again present an exhibition showcasing the year's activities through photographs, maquettes, models, and more. To ensure I don't forget, I would also like to create and present a detailed timeline that clearly outlines where and what I was working on during the year.
So, what kind of year has it been for me?

image sketch
From "Annual" to "Archive".
Takeshi Kudo (Director, Tagawa Museum of Art)
Tadashi Kawamata has advocated the importance of documentation since the beginning of his career.
This exhibition is a “revival” of the “Kawamata Annual,” a document exhibition that Kawamata held at the end of each year from 1987 to 1991 at Art Front Gallery to summarize the year's projects, marks its return for the first time in more than 20 years. As can be inferred from the fact that the exhibition has been renamed the “Kawamata Archive,” in this age of instantaneous access to information from around the world via smartphones, there is an awareness of “systematization” as opposed to “presentation” of information. It is of course important to analyze and interpret “work-in-progress,” in which the planning, installation, and dismantling of a single project are considered as a single work, chronologically from the beginning to the end of the project. However, the maquettes and drawings in Kawamata's project are not mere “intermediate products”. All the products from the project process are equivalent, and each has its own strong specificity. For example, while the maquettes and drawings are grounded in their respective projects, they are reflect Kawamata's identity as an “artist”, which show Kawamata's flexible creativity and originality as well as his compositional skills using unequal angle projection, allowing him to construct a spectacular space on a flat surface or in relief. On the other hand, in the photographs and videos documenting the project, we can see Kawamata's presence blending in with his collaborators and opening up his creative activities to the community. Kawamata dynamically structures the “everyday” by staying close to the local culture and environment of each project site and the lives of the people living there. The situation of Kawamata's “artless” activities, in which Kawamata is objectified by sharing his sensory qualities with many people, will become clearer through the methodology of “archiving”.
In this exhibition, new works of “Tree hut” and “Nest,” which Kawamata has been working on energetically in recent years, will be installed outside the gallery. In the two exhibition rooms, there will be the maquettes for outside installations, a diary of activities in 2024 with photographs and Kawamata's handwritten notes, maquettes and models for “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024,” and artworks created at open studio in Echigo-Tsumari. In addition to those, materials from projects in Rokko, Sendai and Kyoto, as well as photographs and videos documenting the activities in 2024 will be exhibited.
The materials collected for each project are not related to each other as master and servant, but are all equivalent, allowing us to actively view them from our own perspectives. Therefore, by crossing multiple projects and accessing information at random according to the interests of each viewer, it is possible to derive a variety of contemporary issues. Like Kawamata's projects, this exhibition, which is the totality of Kawamata's systematized record of activities in 2024, also has a “participatory” and “openness” that welcomes diverse views, interpretations, and analyses.
【Takeshi Kudo】
Born in Fukuoka in 1967. Director of Tagawa Museum of Art from April 2024.
He worked as a curator at Tagawa Museum of Art from 1993 to 1998, and experienced Kawamata Tadashi’s project “Cole Mine Tagawa” (1996-2006) for several years from the beginning of the project.
He has been a curator at the Aomori Museum of Art since 1998, when the museum was in the preparation period for its opening, and served as the head of the art planning department at the same museum from 2022 to 2024.
The main exhibitions are “Tateishi Tiger” (1994), “Yamamoto Sakubei” (1996), “ROBOTS and the ARTS” (2010), “Bisyoujyo: Young Pretty Girls in Art History“ (2014), “The World of TOMINO Yoshiyuki” (2020), and “TIGER Tateishi: The Retrospective” (2021) etc.







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