Tadashi Kawamata

Tadashi Kawamata was born in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1953 and lives and works between Paris and Tokyo.

In the late 1970s, Tadashi Kawamata began creating site-specific installations in private interiors, galleries, and apartments, dividing spaces into minimal units and passageways. In 1979, he began wrapping building façades with reclaimed wooden planks, whose graphic arrangements conveyed a sense of fragility. His constructions are grafted onto existing architecture, occupying interstitial and transitional spaces. Architecture, urban planning, construction sites, and abandoned spaces become the starting points for structures that use materials found on site. Circulation and the passage of time are central to his work.

At Atelier Calder, Kawamata created Transfert (1994), a three-part installation conceived as a journey between the studio and an exhibition at the Centre de Création Contemporaine (CCC) in Tours. The visitor’s movement through this journey became part of the work, connecting the exhibition space with the place where the installation was created. The central idea of Transfert was both physical, referring to movement between places, and mental, involving a shift in perception. Together, the three stages formed a single, interconnected project.