EXHIBITION

Tadao Ando is one of the most distinguished architects working today. Utilizing intentionally limited materials and forms, Ando creates buildings made of simple elements that structure space and light in dynamic sequences.

Ando draws liberally from the iconography of Western architecture. His rigorous geometry and select media—concrete, glass, wood—derive from international modernism, but he treats his materials with the care of a master craftsman, supplementing their functionality through his sensitive handling and finish.

Japanese architectural philosophy has informed Ando's harmonious integration of edifice and environment. Interior and exterior are intimately connected through the incorporation of water, light, wind, sky, and landscape into his building designs. Shifts in light over the otherwise unadorned surfaces of his walls define and enliven his interior spaces.
"My intent is not to express the nature of the material itself," Ando has noted about his buildings, "but to employ it to establish the single intent of the space." With a refined formal vocabulary and an acute sensitivity to the effects of subtle atmospheric change, Ando creates spaces that produce what he has called "a maximum effect of equilibrium." Such spaces provide sanctuary from the chaos of daily life.

Tadao Ando: Architect was organized by the St. Louis Art Museum. The installation at the Clark Art Institute was designed by Tadao Ando Architect and Associates. The exhibition features Ando's most accomplished projects of the past twenty-five years, ranging from one of his first buildings—Row House, Sumiyoshi, a small residence in Osaka (1975–76)—to an important recent commission—the François Pinault Contemporary Art Foundation, Paris (2001–), which will be the largest undertaking of his career to date.

Ando's design for the exhibition installation features a sequence of pristine, freestanding walls. Positioned according to a mathematical analysis of the volumes of the exhibition galleries, Ando's walls are as much minimalist sculpture as they are utilitarian exhibit supports. As Ando's walls divide the space, they unite it by orchestrating a rhythmic architectural promenade for the visitor. Ando has written, "At times walls manifest a power that borders on the violent. They have the power to divide space, transfigure place, and create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture, but they can also be the most enriching."

In Tadao Ando: Architect, this master builder has brought the spirit of his sublime spaces to the Clark as a sense of what the future holds for the Institute.


All works in the exhibition lent by Tadao Ando Architect and Associates.

Light is the origin of all beings. Light gives, with each moment, new being and new interrelationships to things, and architecture condenses light to its most concise being. The creation of space in architecture is simply the condensation and purification of the power of light.

— Tardo Ando