Shūsaku Arakawa

Place: Nagoya

Born: 1936

Death: 2010

Biography:

Shūsaku Arakawa (荒川 修作, Arakawa Shūsaku, July 6, 1936 – May 19, 2010) was a Japanese conceptual artist and architect. He had a personal and artistic partnership with the writer and artist Madeline Gins that spanned more than four decades in which they collaborated on a diverse range of visual mediums, including films, poetry, and architecture. Arakawa's early works were first displayed in the infamous Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition in 1958, a watershed event for postwar Japanese avant-garde art that departed from the traditional styles of Japanese painting. Arakawa's partnership with Gins led to their creation of films in the late-1960s and early-1970s that further expounded upon the philosophical ideas they explored in their visual art. Arakawa and Gins co-founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation in 2010, an organization dedicated to the use of architecture to extend the human lifespan. They have co-authored several books, including 'Making Dying Illegal' (2006) and 'Architecture Against Death' (2007). Arakawa arrived in New York in 1961 with fourteen dollars in his pocket and a telephone number for Marcel Duchamp, whom he phoned. Beginning in 1963, he collaborated with fellow artist, architect, and poet Madeline Gins on the research project The Mechanism of Meaning, which aimed to create a new language that would allow for a more direct and unmediated experience of reality. Arakawa and Gins 'lost their life savings' in the Bernie Madoff investment scandal, but continued to produce art and architecture until Arakawa's death in 2010.