Nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2000, London-based artist Tomoko Takahashi is known for her large-scale installations of quotidian detritus culled from a world obsessed with consumption. Unruly accumulations of mundane objects, such as computer parts, lamps, buckets, tables, clocks, and toys, express her ongoing interests in collecting, organizing, archiving, and the underlying logic of chaos. The Tokyo-born artist’s throwaway aesthetic is further explored in the Kemper Museum’s recent acquisition Abstract No. 2 (2007)—the focus of this exhibition—a seemingly illogical arrangement of folders, boxes, and hundreds of photographs, suggesting the remnants of an abandoned photographic archive.
Above, left: Tomoko Takahashi, Abstract No. 2, 2007; photographs, salvaged panels, paper, cardboard boxes, dimensions variable; Collection of the Kemper Foundations |
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