The eccentric, time obsessed, and rather reclusive Japanese artist On Kawara (he doesn’t give interviews nor offer any commentary on his own work) currently has a very fascinating exhibit up at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Visitors–or in this case, participants—are asked to sit inside an enclosed booth and take turns reading progressive dates going one million years into the future and one million years into the past. NY Magazine columnist Jerry Saltz has an interesting article up about his experience with the exhibit.
I arrived early at Zwirner to watch other people read. The exercise seemed simultaneously stimulating and dull. I loved that human beings were animating this minimalist box, giving it voice and personality. The overall effect was of a Kafka play, or Beckett, or Monty Python—existential, absurd, ridiculous. From outside the box the experience is pretty low-affect, more like seeing newscasters in the NBC windows at Rockefeller Center than watching, say, a dialogue in a Greek play.
Read the full article here.
See a walk-thru of the exhibit here.
