CHICAGO, IL.- The Graham Foundation is presenting Arakawa and Madeline Gins: Eternal Gradient, an exhibition tracing the emergence of architecture as a wellspring of creativity and theoretical exploration for the artist Arakawa (1936–2010) and poet and philosopher Madeline Gins (1941–2014). Including over 40 drawings and a wide-range of archival materials, this presentation illuminates a pivotal moment within a collaborative practice that spanned nearly five-decades.
In the early 1960s, Arakawa and Gins began a remarkably original and prolific partnership that encompassed painting, installations, poetry, literature, architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and scientific research. Complementing their independent artistic and literary practices, their collaborative work launched with visual, semiotic, and tactile experiments that questioned the limits and possibilities of human perception and consciousness. During the 1980s—a critical juncture in their careers—this line of inquiry became increasingly spatial as Arakawa and Gins together developed a series of speculative architectural projects that sought to challenge the bodily and psychological experience of users. Through these investigations, the artists began to articulate their concept of “Reversible Destiny,” arguing for the transformative capacity of architecture to empower humans to resist their own deaths.
The exhibition examines this pivotal exploratory period through a stunning array of original drawings—many exhibited for the first time—as well as archival material and writings that illuminate the working methods and wide-ranging research interests of Arakawa and Gins. Eternal Gradient is organized in five sections with key speculative projects and ephemera from the 1960s through the 1980s, including the artists’ first full-scale architectural design, Container for Mind-Blank-Body; a group of twenty-four drawings titled Screen-Valves; The Process in Question / The Bridge of Reversible Destiny, a proposal for a 140-meter sequence of 21 spatial units designed to stimulate users’ untapped sensorial powers; a selection of materials that outline the artists’ interest in The Body; and a selection of archival works that provide a point of entry into Arakawa and Gins’ independent practices as Painter and Poet.
Eternal Gradient uncovers a little-known body of visionary work that anticipated the artists’ subsequent commitment to architecture and their realization of various “sites of Reversible Destiny,” including: Ubiquitous Site-Nagi’s Ryoanji (1994, Okayama, Japan); Yoro Park (1995, Gifu, Japan); Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka (2005, Tokyo, Japan); Bioscleave House (2008, East Hampton, New York); and Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator (2013, New York City), completed by Gins after Arakawa’s death.
Occupying the first and second floor galleries of the Madlener House, the exhibition also features a series of floor drawings and steel-mesh structures—designed by Norman Kelley— that recall the densely-gridded drawings on display and enable varying levels of intimacy and perspective for engaging the exhibition.
Eternal Gradient originated at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and is made possible, in part, by the Estate of Madeline Gins and through a partnership with the Reversible Destiny Foundation. It was curated by Irene Sunwoo, GSAPP director of exhibitions and curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, with Tiffany Lambert, GSAPP assistant director of exhibitions. The Graham Foundation presentation is organized by Sarah Herda, director, and Ellen Alderman, deputy director of exhibitions and public programs. The exhibition design is by Norman Kelley, a Chicago & New York architecture and design collective founded by Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley.
(Shusaku) Arakawa (1936–2010) 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, Arakawa was one of the founding members of the Japanese avantgarde collective Neo Dadaism Organizers and was one of the earliest practitioners of the international conceptual-art 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 highlight and investigate the mechanics of human perception and knowledge. Throughout the following decades Arakawa continued to exhibit at museums and galleries extensively throughout North America, Western Europe, and Japan, with works that grew in scale and visual and intellectual complexity.
Madeline Gins (1941–2014) was an American poet, writer, and philosopher. She grew up in Island Park, NY, and graduated from Barnard College in 1962 where she studied physics and philosophy. While studying painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1962, Gins met Arakawa and she would become one of the primary interpreters of Arakawa’s work. With Arakawa, Gins developed the philosophy of “Procedural Architecture” to further its impact on human lives. These ideas were explored through three books that she co-authored with Arakawa: Pour ne Pas Mourir/To Not to Die (Éditions de la Différence, Paris, 1987); Architectural Body (University of Alabama Press, 2002); and Making Dying Illegal – Architecture Against Death: Original to the 21st Century (Roof Books, New York, 2006).
