This present was chosen as a part of Los Angeles Oomph—a roundup of the most effective modern artwork exhibitions and occasions held by galleries, museums, and establishments in L.A. throughout February 2023 on the event of Frieze Los Angeles artwork honest. Curated by Mousse.

In 1963, after discovering a e book on the works of Marcel Duchamp, written fully in French—Shuzo Azuchi was impressed by the liberating qualities he noticed within the works, prompting him to start his first Happenings in highschool. Staging performances reminiscent of Grassfields (1963), through which 9 performers weeded a 9m x 9m plot of the schoolyard, whereas viewers watched from the roof.

In 1967, Azuchi studied philosophy at Ritsumeikan College, throughout this time Azuchi met worldwide members of Fluxus, choosing up the nickname “Gulliver,” and main him to broaden his inventive observe with developments in expanded cinema. Utilizing his personal physique as a reference level, Azuchi charts its relation to house, time, and empirical knowledge. The affect of Duchamp retained in Azuchi’s documentary strategy to inventive manufacturing. Cataloging each the bodily and intangible world (house, sound) and calling to query the mandatory buildings (natural and constructed) which outline us.

Weight (Human Ball) (1978), half of a bigger physique of labor through which the artist creates a stainless-steel ball recording his weight on the time of its manufacturing, documenting, cataloging and superimposing the artist’s bodily mass inside the context of a given time—whereas the polished floor of the ball displays the encircling world. The item rests on a settee—its weight imprinting on the cushion offering a placeholder for the artist’s bodily presence. The later work, Weight (Human Ball) (2022), once more paperwork the artist’s weight on the time of manufacturing, now presenting a barely heavier mass. The sequence offers a complete chart documenting the artist’s bodily presence on the earth over a time period.

Specializing in the ideological idea of the physique, Azuchi’s ongoing BODY (1973-) challenge, formulates a contract entrusting 80 people to 80 elements of the artist’s posthumous physique. The contract, structured as a authorized settlement, lists every of the 80 items of Azuchi’s physique using spatial designation (proper/left), names, numbers, and indicators ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ as symbols for the respective events. The work not solely breaks down the bodily composition of the physique, however within the course of of manufacturing the contract every social gathering acknowledges and confirms the existence of the opposite. Every of the 80 items are meant to turn out to be preserved as artwork objects after the artist’s dying.

Whereas the analytic mapping of the flesh reiterates the artist’s bigger play on the bodily physique’s spatial presence, it additionally introduces Azuchi’s bigger exploration into contracts (indicators and meanings) which outline language, understanding, and supply the muse for empirical data.

“Right here I’m citing the idea of a contract. And this act works to make clear itself. The various ideas that we’ve got fashioned could be regarded as a single contract. The view of the world is a bunch of contracts concluded between the world and us. If the contracts symbolize an change, what have we exchanged with the world?”¹

Throughout the 1984 efficiency De-Story, Azuchi enclosed himself inside a geometrical construction composed of measurements essential for the artist to sit down, stand, and lie. Confined within the house for 10 days (a complete of 240 hours). A speaker connected to the tall ‘stand’ part, tasks the rhythm of the artist’s heartbeat—recalling the coporality of the being contained in the construction. Small De-Story (1984), paperwork this work, reformulating it right into a mannequin match for a goldfish. Introduced alongside the relic Foodbox for De-Story (1984), the unique bento-box used to serve the artist meals 3 instances a day throughout the 10 day efficiency. Whereas these works chart a spatial trajectory of the bodily physique, they acknowledge the physique as a construction which grounds it into the world.

Azuchi’s work additionally extends past bodily statement. Concerned about how every dwelling type consists of 4 components, (A=Adenine, T=Thymine, C=Cytosine, G=Guanine), making up the genetic materials DNA. Azuchi repeats patterns for genetic coding in works reminiscent of Physique/ A.T.C.G (1993), printing the ‘ATCG’ coding upon a chunk of paper and delicately clipping it upon a hanger—in a form paying homage to the human determine.

Though Azuchi’s physique of labor is way ranging, they name to consideration the mandatory buildings elementary to life—whether or not that be the bodily physique, the structuring of language as an settlement of sounds, symbols and their meanings, or the assemble of time. Azuchi’s cataloging of the world offers not solely a humorous perspective on the character of actuality, but additionally a way within the search of that means and reality.

at Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles
till March 25, 2023