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.
He is renowned 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 all those who encounter 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, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Centre Pompidou in Paris the Serpentine Gallery in London and many more.
