Shusaku Arakawa (1936–2010)

When I consider the work of artists Arakawa and Madeline Gins, it's their "architectural" work that comes to fore, what I think was best expressed in their book Architecture: Sites of Reversible Destiny from 1994. Fifteen years before that, the duo produced the first edition of Mechanism of Meaning, which hints at what they would try to achieve later. There are two parts to the revised edition, which came out in 1988: a presentation of wall-mounted, two- and three-dimensional gallery pieces that are geared toward dismantling preconceptions; and drawings for a three-dimensional construction, built mainly of mesh surfaces, that does the same, but does it specifically in terms of how our bodies move through and affect space. The latter half is a stronger hint of what Arakawa and Gins would do eventually with such projects as the Site of Reversible Destiny at Yoro Park in Japan and the Bioscleave House in East Hampton, New York. Although the images are primarily in black and white, the book is handsome throughout, from the vellum cover and heavyweight paper, to the skin-tone pages of the second half of the book and an acetate insert that expresses the duos embrace of science.… (mais)