Tadashi Kawamata
Born in 1953 in Hokkaido (Japan), TADASHI KAWAMATA now lives and works in Tokyo (Japan) and Paris (France), after exploring NYC (United States). Since his days as a student of painting, in the 1970s, Tadashi Kawamata has been on an artistic journey that is remarkable for its lack of complacency. Taking nothing for granted, he engages us in a process that involves close consideration of the kinds of environments we make for ourselves, thereby raising questions of all-too-human need and desire. Kawamata’s gestures and materials, given the contexts within which they occur, are always smartly chosen.
Tadashi Kawamata is indeed famous for his in situ interventions, assembled from, among other things, wooden planks, chairs and barrels.
Whether built up into fragile Babylonian constructions, tree huts, roof installations or stretched out to form serpentine, his works offer, to those who experiment them, climb up onto them or set foot on them, another point of view – in every sense – over the place in which they are situated.
Born in 1953 in Hokkaidō, Japan, Tadashi Kawamata lives and works in Tokyo and Paris. His work has been widely shown in major international institutions such as MAAT, Lisbon (2018), Pushkin Museum, Moscow (2018), Made in Cloister, Napoli (2017), the Thurgau Art Museum, Switzerland (2014), the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2010) and Metz (2016), the Toyosu Dome, in Tokyo (2010-2013), the HKW in Berlin (2009), the Art Tower Mito in Mito (2001), the Serpentine Gallery in London (1997), the Artpace San Antonio (1998), the MACBA in Barcelona (1996); and also during numerous art biennales such as the Venice Biennale (1982), the documenta 8 and IX (1987; 1992), the international Biennale of São Paulo (1987), the Contemporary Art Biennale in Lyon (1993), the Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997), the Sydney Biennale (1998), the Jerusalem Biennale (1999), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Niigata (2000), the Shanghai Biennale, the Busan Biennale (2002), the Valencia Biennale (2004), the Biennale Evento in Bordeaux (2009) and the Helsinki Biennial (2021).
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