Untitled, 1997

The architectural sculptures by Tadashi Kawamata appear light and seemingly accessible. He tends to cross boundaries between installation art and organic architecture. With his seemingly chaotic wooden objects he rerecords extant buildings or exceeds these with structures that seem to develop lives of their own.

Kawamata's frequent duplications point to a Japanese Shinto ritual of Shukunen Shengu, in which the Ise Temple, a building central to the religion, has been duplicated in every detail every twenty years since the seventh century. The meaning and craft of the building technique is transferred from the older structure to the new building and its creator.

With his very uniquely planned projects, guided by models and drawings, Kawamata moves in a gray zone between destruction and reconstruction, illuminating imitation and playful ritual.