Tadashi Kawamata

Tadashi Kawamata (born 1953) is an artist who transforms our environment, he works in the midst of demolition and construction.

These projects have taken place all over the world and range from intimate transformations of a single house or apartment to the whole scale reconfiguration of towns. Usually using scrap or reclaimed materials, mostly wood, Kawamata sets about building new and unusual structures; a bridge between an apartment block and a museum, a wooden walkway that leads from a town center to a lakeside, slum dwellings constructed in a picturesque park.

Kawamata's aim is to turn these environments inside out and present the viewers with a completely fresh view of their surroundings, whether it's from a walkway built three meters above the town square or by a room transformed with a suspended ceiling of reclaimed doors. These projects make us question our environment, the way it is constructed and how we interact with it.

Born in Hokkaido, Japan in 1953, Tadashi Kawamata has had many one-man exhibitions and projects throughout Europe, the United States and Japan including the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Kunsthalle, Recklinghausen and the Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo.

Tadashi Kawamata exhibited at the 40th Venice Biennale in 1982, and later was invited to Documenta VIII and Documenta IX.

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