Since first exhibiting his work in 1977, Tadashi Kawamata has produced a large amount of sculpture, tree houses, showpiece for exhibition and projects all over the world.

Tadashi Kawamata’s installations almost always take the form of rough wooden constructions halfway between the framework of the fragmentary exoskeleton of a building and the rickety scaffolding that surrounds a structure under repair or awaiting demolition. They are sprawling, chaotic, improvised, and incomplete as if the builders had to leave in a hurry.

Kawamata’s structures resemble homeless encampments, a type of provisional architecture that in its most simple way meets the basic survival needs of its builders. Some, like the favelas of Rio, have lasted decades, are fabricated from stable materials and start to merge into the official buildings of the city. Most, however, are built with the knowledge that they will be torn down whenever the next urban renewal project begins, when local residents demand that something be done to make them disappear.

By conjuring practical building rather than the theorized art of architecture, (which may speak in intentionally self-contradictory ways) Kawamata’s art is by definition optimistic. One does not build or renovate if one has forsaken the possibility of a (better) future. One does not take care to carefully raze a building unless one plans to build anew.

For further informstion visit: www.tk-onthetable.com.