This present was chosen as a part of Los Angeles Oomph—a roundup of the perfect modern artwork exhibitions and occasions held by galleries, museums, and establishments in L.A. throughout February 2023 on the event of Frieze Los Angeles artwork honest. Curated by Mousse.
In 1963, after discovering a e book on the works of Marcel Duchamp, written completely in French—Shuzo Azuchi was impressed by the liberating qualities he noticed within the works, prompting him to begin his first Happenings in highschool. Staging performances corresponding to Grassfields (1963), by which 9 performers weeded a 9m x 9m plot of the schoolyard, whereas viewers watched from the roof.
In 1967, Azuchi studied philosophy at Ritsumeikan College, throughout this time Azuchi met worldwide members of Fluxus, selecting up the nickname “Gulliver,” and main him to broaden his inventive apply with developments in expanded cinema. Utilizing his personal physique as a reference level, Azuchi charts its relation to area, time, and empirical knowledge. The affect of Duchamp retained in Azuchi’s documentary strategy to inventive manufacturing. Cataloging each the bodily and intangible world (area, sound) and calling to query the required buildings (natural and constructed) which outline us.
Weight (Human Ball) (1978), half of a bigger physique of labor by which the artist creates a stainless-steel ball recording his weight on the time of its manufacturing, documenting, cataloging and superimposing the artist’s bodily mass throughout the context of a given time—whereas the polished floor of the ball displays the encircling world. The article rests on a settee—its weight imprinting on the cushion offering a placeholder for the artist’s bodily presence. The later work, Weight (Human Ball) (2022), once more paperwork the artist’s weight on the time of manufacturing, now presenting a barely heavier mass. The collection supplies a complete chart documenting the artist’s bodily presence on the planet over a time frame.
Specializing in the ideological idea of the physique, Azuchi’s ongoing BODY (1973-) undertaking, formulates a contract entrusting 80 people to 80 elements of the artist’s posthumous physique. The contract, structured as a authorized settlement, lists every of the 80 items of Azuchi’s physique using spatial designation (proper/left), names, numbers, and indicators ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ as symbols for the respective events. The work not solely breaks down the bodily composition of the physique, however within the course of of manufacturing the contract every social gathering acknowledges and confirms the existence of the opposite. Every of the 80 items are meant to change into preserved as artwork objects after the artist’s demise.
Whereas the analytic mapping of the flesh reiterates the artist’s bigger play on the bodily physique’s spatial presence, it additionally introduces Azuchi’s bigger exploration into contracts (indicators and meanings) which outline language, understanding, and supply the muse for empirical information.
“Right here I’m citing the idea of a contract. And this act works to make clear itself. The various ideas that now we have fashioned will be regarded as a single contract. The view of the world is a bunch of contracts concluded between the world and us. If the contracts signify an alternate, what have we exchanged with the world?”1
Throughout the 1984 efficiency De-StoryAzuchi enclosed himself inside a geometrical construction composed of measurements essential for the artist to sit down, stand, and lie. Confined within the area for 10 days (a complete of 240 hours). A speaker hooked up to the tall ‘stand’ part, initiatives the rhythm of the artist’s heartbeat—recalling the coporality of the being contained in the construction. Small De-Story (1984), paperwork this work, reformulating it right into a mannequin match for a goldfish. Introduced alongside the relic Foodbox for De-Story (1984), the unique bento-box used to serve the artist meals 3 instances a day in the course of the 10 day efficiency. Whereas these works chart a spatial trajectory of the bodily physique, they acknowledge the physique as a construction which grounds it into the world.
Azuchi’s work additionally extends past bodily statement. Focused on how every dwelling type consists of 4 components, (A=Adenine, T=Thymine, C=Cytosine, G=Guanine), making up the genetic materials DNA. Azuchi repeats patterns for genetic coding in works corresponding to Physique/ A.T.C.G (1993), printing the ‘ATCG’ coding upon a bit of paper and delicately clipping it upon a hanger—in a form paying homage to the human determine.
Though Azuchi’s physique of labor is way ranging, they name to consideration the required buildings elementary to life—whether or not that be the bodily physique, the structuring of language as an settlement of sounds, symbols and their meanings, or the assemble of time. Azuchi’s cataloging of the world supplies not solely a humorous perspective on the character of actuality, but additionally a way within the search of that means and fact.
at Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles
till March 25, 2023
