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On Kawara

ON KAWARA

Date Paintings David Zwirner 21 November 2024–25 January 2025 London
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Press Release

David Zwirner is pleased to announce two exhibitions of paintings by On Kawara (1932–2014), which will be on view concurrently at the gallery’s London and Paris locations. The presentations are organized in collaboration with the One Million Years Foundation, established by the artist during his lifetime to ensure the legacy of his work. These exhibitions are the gallery’s first presentations of Kawara’s work since his death in 2014 and offer a rare opportunity to view two significant bodies of his paintings.

On view in London will be twenty-four paintings from Kawara’s signature Today series—known collectively as his “Date Paintings.” Spanning almost the entire range of this body of work from 1966, the year Kawara began the series, to 2012, shortly before its conclusion, the exhibition will feature a representative selection that includes several large-scale paintings, a diptych made in Mexico City in April 1968, and one painting from every year of the 1970s. Viewed together, these paintings showcase both the formal and conceptual breadth of this decades-long project. Through their straightforward and direct composition, these works suggest a profound message, addressing not only the passage of time but the nature of consciousness itself.

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Installation Views

For On Kawara, It Was a Productive Day Opinion For On Kawara, It Was a Productive Day Midnight was the deadline for Japanese Conceptual artist On Kawara. If he failed to complete the painting—a calendar date in white sans serif type on a monochromatic background—he would destroy the canvas. Read the story
About the Artist

For over five decades, On Kawara created paintings, drawings, books, and recordings that examined chronological time and its function as a measure of human existence. His artistic practice was characterized by its meditative approach to concepts of time, space, and consciousness. He began making his now signature date paintings (known as the Today series) on January 4, 1966 in New York City and continued to produce them in different parts of the world up until his death.

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Also Exhibiting at David Zwirner

All Exhibitions
Michaël Borremans
MICHAËL BORREMANS French Painting David Zwirner 5 June–22 July 2026 Paris
Steven Shearer
STEVEN SHEARER My Moody Muse David Zwirner 4 June–31 July 2026 London
Group Exhibition
GROUP EXHIBITION California Light and Space (The 21st Century Version) David Zwirner 4 June–1 August 2026 Los Angeles
Dan Flavin
DAN FLAVIN Grids David Zwirner 28 May–8 August 2026 Hong Kong
About the Gallery
Since opening its doors in 1993, David Zwirner has been home to innovative, singular, and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres. The gallery has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today, and has maintained long-term representation of a wide-ranging, international group of artists and estates. Based in New York with spaces in Chelsea and the Upper East Side, David Zwirner expanded to Europe in 2012 with a gallery in an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse in London’s Mayfair district, and opened its first gallery in Asia in January 2018 in Central Hong Kong.
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Address
24 Grafton Street
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Thursday
10am – 6pm
(1)
London 24 Grafton Street
David Zwirner contemporary art gallery in London United Kingdom
David Zwirner
24 Grafton Street, London, United Kingdom
+44 203 538 3165
http://www.davidzwirner.com

Opening hours
Tuesday – Thursday
10am – 6pm
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