Shusaku Arakawa, who moved to the United States in 1961 and thereafter based his practice in New York, gained international recognition for his striking "Diagram" series composed of elements such as words, arrows, symbols, and lines. In 1971, he published The Mechanism of Meaning, a collaborative body of work with his lifelong partner, the poet Madeline Gins, which explored the processes through which humans perceive and construct meaning.

　Created in 1974, And / Or in Profile presents a large-scale composition in which words and symbols function simultaneously as both image and text, requiring the viewer to engage in acts of both seeing and reading. The horizontally oriented composition is structured into four columns of words: the first, second, and fourth columns repeat identical terms, while the third presents their corresponding antonyms. A long, rainbow-colored line traverses the composition diagonally downward from left to right, passing beneath the word "long" and subtly shifting the rightmost column to a slightly lower position. Below this, a plinth-like line is drawn, upon which an actual level is placed. At the bottom of the composition appear two sentences: "A position of believing in what is perceived" and "A position of believing out from what is perceived." Here, the relationship between perception and cognition is called into question through the tension between "in" and "out," and between what is seen and what lies beyond it.

　The gradation of light and dark suggests a relationship between memory and forgetting, while the seemingly rational structure destabilizes as the viewer’s position shifts, causing the columns of words to appear and disappear. Through this work, Arakawa appears to suggest that meaning is not fixed but is continuously generated and transformed through the interplay between seeing and reading.

Bibliography :
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, ed., Constructing the Perceiver — ARAKAWA: Experimental Works, exhibition catalogue, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1991
Nagoya City Art Museum, ed., ANALYZING THE ART OF ARAKAWA SHUSAKU, exhibition catalogue, Nagoya City Art Museum, 2005





Lot.244 ARAKAWA Shusaku
And / Or in Profile
Acrylic and collage on canvas
195.7 × 272.0 cm (77 × 107⅛ in.)
JPY 6,000,000 - 9,000,000
USD 37,700 - 56,600

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