Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), one of the most influential American artists of the latter half of the twentieth century, is renowned for exploring the possibilities of what art can be through works focused on ideas. This exhibition, the first substantial survey of his art at a public museum in Japan, offers an overview of his expansive practice, encompassing wall drawings, structures, works on paper, and artist's books that radically transformed the terms of artistic production.
This exhibition illuminates the notion of "open structure," which characterizes LeWitt’s art. Many of his cubic works expose the framework that supports their forms by eliminating surfaces and emphasizing side lines. Works such as Incomplete Open Cube (1974), where certain edges are absent, evoke the dynamics of a structure in a state of sequential transformation, much like a single frame in chronophotography, thus dismantling notions of perfection and invariability. It is also notable that his wall drawings can take on different forms depending on the space and conditions in which they are installed, as well as those who execute them. No matter how precisely the artist’s instructions are followed in translating ideas into form, a degree of unpredictability and interpretation by others inevitably intervenes, an aspect the works embrace. His statement, "Ideas cannot be owned. They belong to whoever understands them," reflects his belief in resisting the notion that ideas are the property of a single person and in committing to sharing them with all who might receive them. To make his ideas more accessible, LeWitt produced numerous artist’s books. This led him to co-found Printed Matter in 1976, with art critic Lucy R. Lippard and others, an organization dedicated to distributing artists’ books independent of the established art market.
