On Kawara: Reading One Million Years (Past and Future) at David Zwirner Gallery
In his latest exhibition, On Kawara presented what was ostensibly a pair of empty rooms. Minimally designed. they included muted gray carpets and false ceilings similar to those found in corporate offices. The only objects in these rooms were a set of four dark gray foam cubes intended as seats, but used only hesitantly by gallery visitors, who must have assumed they were sculpture. From a sitting position, however, it was easier to absorb the sensory qualities of Kawara's exhibition. Its minimal visuality is meant to underscore a sense of temporal isolation, and to acknowledge as palpable the voices that sound from speakers above the false ceiling. Alternating between a male and a female, one set of voices counts downward from an obscurely large variable (...995,081 BC....995,080 BC....995,079 BC...) and the other counts upward (...3,087 AD....3,088 AD....3,089 AD....). Both counts move forward, one toward the Year Zero, and the other toward future millennia. Other sensory qual