” Horizontality and Verticality” documents the various places visited by Japanese artist On Kawara through his projects “I GOT UP” and “I WENT “, ongoing projects begun in 1968. “I GOT UP” consists of stamped postcards–stating time, venue, sender, and addressee–sent twice a day by Kawara from cities all over the world to friends and acquaintances. “I WENT” documents the distances covered daily by the artist, marked in photocopies of city maps. “Horizontality and Verticality” covers both process-projects, combining a postcard and a city map for each day. French novelist and theorist Michel Butor contributes with an essay on Kawara’s extremely systematic art–which recalls, in its way, Butor’s experiments with the “nouveau roman” (or new novel) in the 1950s and 1960s. Beautiful and necessary, “Horizontality and Verticality” is an impressive testament to Kawara’s dismantling of the boundaries between art and life.

Since the beginning of 2007, Karlyn De Jongh searched for questions to On Kawara by persons who know the artist or his work very well. This resulted in a collection of 79 questions by people from all over the world. After several attempts to present these questions to On Kawara – trying to meet him in New York, sending postcards with the questions to him and contacting some of his close friends – until the day of this publication, the questions remain unanswered.

Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium, September 1 – October 2, 1974. Preface by Yves Gevaert. Artists include Carl Andre, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Gilbert & George, On Kawara, Richard Long, and Gerhard Richter. Illustrated in black-and-white and color. Includes artists’ biographies.

“Artists’ book / exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, October 11 – November 23, 1980; the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, January 30 – March 15, 1981; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, March 22 – May 3, 1981; and The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, May 17 – June 16,1981. Texts by Olle Granath, Peter Nilson, and On Kawara. Includes chronological list of works in the exhibition, biography, and bibliography. Text in English, with Swedish translations of the text in the back of the book. ”

No artist’s statement here, no portrait of the artist and no interview. There are also no newspaper cuttings to provide a commentary of current affairs for the Date Paintings, and no colourful postcards. Being still alive for almost forty years is embodied essentially in this exhibition a retrospective of Kawara’s works, and a contemplation on his approach. Includes chosen texts by, amongst others, Kahlil Gibran, Kajin Yamamoto, David Bohm and Roger Penrose.

Horizontality and Verticality documents the various places visited by Japanese artist On Kawara through his projects “I GOT UP” and “I WENT “, ongoing projects begun in 1968. “I GOT UP” consists of stamped postcards–stating time, venue, sender, and addressee–sent twice a day by Kawara from cities all over the world to friends and acquaintances. “I WENT” documents the distances covered daily by the artist, marked in photocopies of city maps. “Horizontality and Verticality” covers both process-projects, combining a postcard and a city map for each day. French novelist and theorist Michel Butor contributes with an essay on Kawara’s extremely systematic art–which recalls, in its way, Butor’s experiments with the “nouveau roman” (or new novel) in the 1950s and 1960s. Beautiful and necessary, “Horizontality and Verticality” is an impressive testament to Kawara’s dismantling of the boundaries between art and life.

Because of his recourse to language, photography and systems of information, On Kawara is often described as a key figure in the history of Conceptual art. Yet his work stands apart in its devotion to painting and its existential reach. On Kawara – Silence is published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Kawara’s post-1964 work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Like the exhibition itself, the structure of the book was devised in close collaboration with the late artist. The exhibition catalogue contains essays on Kawara’s work by leading scholars and critics in various fields, including art history, literary studies and cultural anthropology. It also includes substantial, authoritative descriptions of every category of his production-the first time such comprehensive information has appeared in print. Richly illustrated, On Kawara – Silence reproduces many examples of the Date Paintings (Today), calendars (One Hundred Years and One Million Years), postcards (I Got Up), telegrams (I Am Still Alive), news cuttings (I Read), maps (I Went) and lists (I Met) that comprised the artist’s practice beginning in the mid-1960s. Among other groups of works, the book includes images of the 97 Date Paintings (accompanied by their newspaper-lined storage boxes) that Kawara produced during a three-month run of daily painting in 1970. The catalogue also contains reproductions of paintings and drawings produced in Paris and New York in the years that precede the works for which Kawara is best known, as well as rare images of materials related to his working process. The volume is published in four differently colored covers. Text by Jeffrey Weiss, Daniel Buren, Whitney Davis, Maria Gough, Ben Highmore, Tom McCarthy, Susan Stewart and Anne Wheeler.
On Kawara was born in Japan in 1933. During the 1950s he was a prominent member of the postwar Tokyo avant-garde, producing figurative work in a late-Surrealist style. Kawara left Japan in 1959, traveling to Mexico City, Paris and New York, where he settled in 1964. By 1966 he had devoted his work solely to the schematic representation of time and place through calendars, maps, lists, postcards and telegrams. Kawara’s primary body of work, which occupied him until his death in 2014, is the Today series, a sequence of paintings produced according to strict protocols of size, color and technique. An incessant traveler, the artist produced Date Paintings in 136 cities and various languages.

Japanese-born, New York-based On Kawara is one of the world’s best-known yet most mysterious conceptual artists, an international figure since the 1960s who is still of great interest to a new generation of contemporary art followers. He is a legendary, enigmatic figure; part of his art is to eliminate all traces of himself, save for his art. Thus he is never photographed or interviewed, and he never attends the openings of his exhibitions. Kawara’s existence is documented solely through his daily art-making practice. These include thousands of his well-known “Date Paintings” (ongoing since 1965), meticulously painted works which consist simply of the date on which the work is made, boxed with a copy of that day’s newspaper; or postcards and telegrams sent to his friends, bearing such messages as “I am still alive”, begun in 1969. His many artist’s books (among them, One-Million Years [Past, 1970-71, and Future, 1980], ten-volume books which enumerate one by one the past and future one million years, or “I met”, a list of all the people he has ever met) attest to the quiet, almost Zen-like dedication of this artist obsessed by repetition and the passage of time. Despite its inherent monotony, Kawara’s work offers a surprising variety in its formal presentation: from painting, to installation, to books, to telegrams and postcards. In recent years “Frieze”, the up-to-the-minute London magazine dedicated to the very newest international art, took exception to its new-art-only policy and featured this veteran artist on its cover, attesting to Kawara’s evergreen interest in the art world, from students to blue-chip collectors. Included in every major conceptual art survey, the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie International and numerous Documentas, Kawara has also presented major solo museum exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1977), the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (and tour, 1980), the DIA Center for the Arts, New York (1993), and Le Nouveau Musee/Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbaine (1995).

On Kawara (1932–2014) is one of the most important and most radical artists of our time. His oeuvre is consumed with time and place, and he has produced a body of work that is dizzying in its simultaneous temporal breadth and rigorous specificity. On Kawara: 1966 focuses on Kawara’s creations from 1966, the year he began work on his famous Today series of date paintings. Kawara created more than 2,000 date paintings in total, in more than 100 different cities, using folders to accurately keep track of his work, with a smear of the paint he used for each painting, the newspaper headlines for that day along with notes about the painting’s format.
On Kawara: 1966, published to accompany the last exhibition Kawara collaborated on before his death, documents the artist’s work and his extraordinary personal archive for that year.

Produced by Otis Gallery for the exhibition of the same title. Organized by Hal Glicksman, Gallery Director, on the recommendation of Kasper Koenig. Exhibition dates October 27 – December 4, 1977. Essay by Lucy Lippard. The catalogue presents On Kawara’s journal documenting the production of his date paintings made during 1967. Also included are original color samples and photographs documenting Kawara’s environment during this period.

Can you recall what you were doing on April 3, 1990? What about on July 17, 1996? October 23, 1998? In Date Paintings, time itself has become art–art that carries viewers back in time. These black and white paintings are pure realism, the existence of time put in painting, thus rendering the works–up to a certain point–both viewable and readable. The 11 paintings, made by Conceptual artist On Kawara over the course of a decade, allow viewers to complete their reading with personal associations, historical events or academic interpretations. The book, conceived with Kawara himself, is a decidedly different and intimate take on an artist’s monograph. In it, Kawara has invented a simple and striking way to make art by taking his time and using the calendar to make a kind of non-individual art work.

“Hotel Carlton Palace Chambre 763” is a printed yellow slipcase / box holding an exhibition brochure and 55 postcards by artists such as: Absalon, Armleder John, Baumgarten Lothar, Bertrand Jean-Pierre, Boetti Alighiero, Boltanski Christian, Bruly-Bouabré , Brandl Herbert, Cattelan Maurizio, Eichorn Maria, Faust Max, Feldmann Hans Peter, Fischli Peter & Weiss David, Friedman Gloria, Fritsch Katharina, Genzken Isa, Gette Paul-Armand, Gilbert & George, Golub Leon, Gonzales-Foerster Dominique, Gonzales-Torres Felix, Gordon Douglas, Hains Raymond, Hirakawa Noritoshi, Hoffmann Leni, Hybert Fabrice, Kabakov Emilia und Ilya, Kawara On, Knowles Alison, Lavier Bertrand, Lehanka M., Lüthi Urs, Marisaldi Eva, Messager Annette, Mühl Otto, Obholzer Walter, Othoniel Jean-Michel, Pippin Steven, Pistoletto Michelangelo, Reed David, Richter Gerhard, Rullier Jean-Jacques, Ruppersberg Allen, Ruscha Ed, Ruthenbeck Rainer, Skala , Slominski Andreas, Spero Nancy, Tiravanija Rikrit, Toroni Niele, Trenet Didier, Weiner Lawrence, Wentworth Richard, West Franz.

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