Shusaku Arakawa

Shusaku Arakawa was born in Nagoya, Japan and attended the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Renowned for his paintings, drawings, and prints, as well as his visionary architectural constructions he was one of the earliest practitioners of the international conceptualart movement of the 1960s. After moving to New York from Japan in 1961, Arakawa produced diagrammatic paintings, drawings, and other conceptual works that employed systems of words and signs to both highlight and investigate the mechanics of human perception and knowledge.
In 1962, Arakawa met the American poet Madeline Gins, with whom he developed a personal and creative partnership. Together they expanded Arakawa’s painting practice into an important series entitled The Mechanism of Meaning: a suite of 80 canvases that explored and further exposed the workings of human consciousness and “solving the problem of art.”
In the 1990s, Arakawa and Gins developed a theory of ‘procedural architecture’ to further their philosophical implication’s impact on human lives. Standing examples of their architecture include: the Reversible Destiny Lofts–Mitaka; Site of Reversible Destiny -Yoro; and a permanent work at Nagi MOCA (all in Japan) as well as Bioscleave House, a private home in Long Island, New York.
Arakawa’s work is featured in institutional collections world-wide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, as well as in numerous private and corporate collections. He represented Japan in XXXV Venice Biennale (1970) and was included in Documenta IV (1968 ) and Documenta VI (1977). His work has also been the focus of major retrospectives at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and has been exhibited extensively throughout North America, Western Europe and Japan.