Ei Arakawa

Ei Arakawa at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen

In 2018, a documentary film was made about the artistic work of Ei Arakawa (born 1977 in Fukushima, Japan) to mark his first institutional solo exhibition, ‘Performance People’ at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf. The New York-based artist is known for a practice that operates primarily at the intersections of performance, installation art and institutional critique.

Arakawa’s works are characterised by a consistent deconstruction of traditional concepts of artwork and authorship. His performative arrangements are based on fluid, collective processes that actively involve the audience, historical references and the exhibition architecture. Methodologically, his work draws on the strategies of the post-war avant-garde – in particular the performative approaches of the Japanese Gutai group and the international Fluxus movement. Through these interactive spatial structures, the relationships between the art object, the institution and the viewer are critically examined and renegotiated.

The media coverage of this exhibition focused on capturing the process-oriented and ephemeral nature of Arakawa’s artistic practice on video. The documentation serves to archive and analyse contemporary performance art; its presentation in moving images builds a methodological bridge between the fleeting event and its enduring reception.