‘I Prefer Poetry to Pedagogy’: Tadashi Kawamata Comes to Frieze London

Tadashi Kawamata’s reclaimed-timber structures offer an alternative definition of shelter. Huts perch in trees and nests attach to buildings’ façades, finding support in existing structures. They suggest a place to retreat, but their precarious, exposed positions put the promise of protection in doubt.

Born in Hokkaido in 1953, Kawamata has spent more than four decades making installations in public spaces and historic sites worldwide. In 1987, for documenta 8, Kawamata built Destroyed Church from scrap timber amid the remains of Kassel’s war-damaged Garnisonkirche. Planks crossed and jutted out at opposing angles, as though the building were breaking apart. The construction seemed held at the point of collapse, making the site’s history of violence physically present.

At Frieze London (14–18 October 2026), Kawamata will present a site-specific installation in the Ruinart Art Bar, alongside drawings and models informed by his visit to Ruinart’s Reims headquarters as part of the Champagne brand’s Conversations with Nature programme.

The drawings and models represent early ideas that went on to form the three permanent works that now occupy Ruinart’s site at 4, Rue des Crayères in Reims. Nest—the latest iteration of Kawamata’s series of ephemeral, site-specific installations with this name—projects from a corner of the historic building, high above the ground. Short, overlapping planks form a bulging enclosure that narrows to a point. Their ends jut out at different angles, interrupting the façade’s regular arrangement of windows. The form recalls Ruth Asawa’s suspended looped-wire sculptures, inspired by on plants and spiders’ webs: in both, enclosure emerges through the accumulation of small, repeated gestures.

Tree Hut is more recognisably a cabin, with plank walls, a sloping roof and a rectangular opening. It sits on a projecting platform, with timber braces beneath it and branches spreading around it. Shadows of leaves fall across the walls, making the tree part of the cabin’s surface as well as its support.

Above the chalk cellars, where Ruinart Champagne is stored, the six-metre-tall Observatory rises from a narrow base into a broader, circular viewing platform. Upright planks surround the lookout, with gaps opening on to the sky. The elevated view of the grounds comes with exposure to light, air and changing weather.

In Giuseppe Penone’s Alpi Marittime series (1967–1968), a tree grows around a metal cast of the artist’s hand, gradually taking it into the trunk. Kawamata’s hut also rests on a living support that keeps changing after construction ends. “The wind, rain, sun and gravity are all part of my sculptures,” Kawamata says. Wood changes colour as it weathers; the tree supporting the hut continues to grow.

Reclaimed timber retains nails, dents and grooves from its previous uses, according to the artist. In smaller models and collages, fragments of wood and cardboard carry Kawamata’s architectural thinking into another scale. Miniaturisation changes the relationship between a structure and the hand, bringing its joints and construction within reach.

Kawamata hopes these shifts in scale will encourage a more modest sense of our place in the landscape. Feeling small, he suggests, makes an insect, leaf or shadow easier to notice. Asked whether art can draw attention to nature’s fragility, he says: “I prefer poetry to pedagogy.”—[O]

Conversations with Nature (14–18 October 2026) at the Ruinart Art Bar at Frieze London

Main image: Tadashi Kawamata’s studio. Courtesy Ruinart.