On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules /
Curated by Hou Hanru and Ying Kwok, with Jill Angel Chun /
May 23 – Aug 17, 2025 /
JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun
10 Hollywood Road
Central, Hong Kong
Tue – Sun, 11am – 7pm
Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to present the work of pioneering conceptual artist On Kawara, in the first major retrospective in the world conceived after his passing in 2014. On Kawara revolutionised how art can be constructed and experienced, building a lifelong artistic practice defined by a deeply human approach. Consisting of profound gestures that transform the mundane act of marking time into a meditation on human consciousness, each piece from the artist is remarkably personal and yet speaks to universal human experiences. Tai Kwun’s exhibition presents the artist’s most iconic series and features an episodic section dedicated to the artist’s visit to Hong Kong in 1978. On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules will be on view from 23 May to 17 August 2025 in the 1st Floor gallery space of the JC Contemporary and the F Hall.
On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules explores works that reshape our understanding of time and existence. Tracing his daily routines throughout the world, the exhibition features all of On Kawara’s celebrated series, spanning over half a century of work: Today, I Am Still Alive, I Got Up, I Met, I Went, I Read and live performances of One Million Years.
The Today series immortalises Karawa’s position in time, and also space: each painting consists solely of the date on which it was executed, depicted in simple white lettering against a solid background, with subtleties in formatting and accompanying newspaper clippings pointing to the locality and current events in its place of creation. The dates, stamps, and images that proliferate in the I Am Still Alive, I Got Up, I Met, and I Wentseries provide the same spatiotemporal context, yet offer a more personal insight, with each telegram reading like private whispers sent across continents, and each postcard sketching a tender map of ordinary days.
At the heart of the exhibition is a special room dedicated to Kawara’s visit to Hong Kong in 1978, during his 46th birthday. Throughout his time in the city, the artist continued his rigorous daily rituals, creating Today series paintings while also diligently documenting his movements through his other ongoing series. These pieces trace Kawara’s footsteps across Hong Kong, emphasising his deep connection to the Asia-Pacific region and grounding his global portfolio within a local context. The episodic section further examines Kawara as a global citizen and artist-philosopher, probing how his engaging work bridges the everyday and the metaphysical, simplicity and complexity, the present and the eternal. His minimal yet meaning-rich practice captures a paradox familiar in today’s globalised world: finding stability within perpetual movement.
Shifting the exhibition’s perspective from the intimate to the expansive is the powerful piece, One Million Years. This ambitious work moves away from Kawara’s focus on the everyday, instead bringing visitors into contact with time on a vast, ahistorical scale. Respectively titled One Million Years: Past and One Million Years: Future, each work comprises ten binders containing, in total, two thousand pages containing one million years’ worth of dates. This exhibition presents One Million Years as a live installation, with a rotating cast of international performers and volunteers reciting the typed numbers year after year. This immersive experience allows Kawara’s boundary-pushing exploration of time to be preserved and continuously reinterpreted, inviting the audience to act as active participants in his conceptual universe.
Over the course of the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will host a variety of public programmes and educational events exploring the exhibition’s themes. These include Tai Kwun Conversations moderated by Ying Kwok in dialogue with co-curator Hou Hanru, artists Au Hoi Lam and Yang Zhenzhong; Teacher’s Morning and Teacher’s Workshop sessions, and Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary, which explore the artist’s use of materials and narrative. Guided Tour: Who’s Next? will provide docent-led tours delving into the artist’s creative process, techniques, and inspirations. The Hi! & Seek Corner, an open space on the 2nd floor, will be open as usual for visitor dialogue, exploration, and interactive experiences related to the exhibition.