Julia Westerbeke. Geophony, 2015 (detail); punctured and carved paper; 22 in x 15 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

In Geophony (2015), Westerbeke uses simple mark-making techniques to create intricately textured layers of thick watercolor paper. The title of this work is interesting to consider. As a scientific term, “geophony” refers to the sounds naturally generated by the geophysical activity on Earth, which includes wind, rainfall, thunder, and volcanoes. Here Westerbeke’s fascination with the mysterious attributes of nature manifests itself in a physical interpretation of the aural wonders of that which cannot be seen, only heard.

Julia Westerbeke. Afterimage IV, 2015; punctured paper; 32 in x 48.5 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The idea of absence informing presence is another one of Westerbeke’s curiosities. Invoking Gaston Bachelard’s concept of “psychic weight”—in which the French philosopher explores the power that certain imagery has in eliciting personal memory—Westerbeke’s series involves a degree of abstraction that aims to do just that. In Afterimage IV (2015), viewers are drawn in to an elaborate braille-like composition, subtly texturing the outer sides of a plain white canvas while leaving an amorphous space of openness in between. By creating a visual balance between what appears to be a complex process of creation and the airiness that surrounds it, Westerbeke allows viewers the ability to flow between the artist’s state of consciousness and their own, projecting patterns of association and memory onto the empty canvas.

Julia Westerbeke. Afterimage IV, 2015 (detail); punctured paper; 32 in x 48.5 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Westerbeke’s production is gradually moving toward various modes of minimalism, and her technical strategies embody this trajectory. The artist’s matte-white compositions retain a purity that emphasizes the textural aspect of the work. In Paramnesia (2015), the surface of the thick watercolor paper is painstakingly punctured into a pattern that is evocative of the artist’s fascination with the complex microcosms found in nature. Using the line as the core of her process, Westerbeke describes her production as beginning with a traced pattern on canvas. She then moves into a meditative trance in which she allows the pattern to flow organically, driven by a subconscious movement that Westerbeke describes as “ritualistic.” In this way, the repetitive act of the texture-making process becomes Westerbeke’s translation of the idea that the subtle can give rise to the sublime, and the physical can manifest the metaphysical.

Julia Westerbeke. Paramnesia, 2015; punctured paper, frame; 30 in x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Between labor and play there is an intensity, and Westerbeke’s ethereal, hushed aesthetic produces a tension that captures the essence of human life—the shifting modes of consciousness and subconsciousness, the space between the realms of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the relativity of the human body to itself and to the universe. Westerbeke doesn’t attempt to reconcile these polarities; a simple answer may not be readily available, and perhaps it is precisely in the in-between-ness of these states, generated by paradoxical modalities, that one can find room for respite and contemplation.

Julia Westerbeke. Paramnesia, 2015 (detail); punctured paper, frame; 30 in x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Julia Westerbeke is an artist, curator, and educator based in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. Past exhibitions include Deluge at the DeYoung Museum, Staccato at den contemporary, Alien Organic at compactspace, and Morphology at A.I.R. Gallery. Her work has been featured in On-Verge, the WILD Magazine, Art Ltd, Les Femmes Folles, the Hollywood Sentinel, and the SF MoMA blog, among other publications and news sources.

On Kawara. On Kawara—Silence, 2015; installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Photo: David Heald.

On Kawara is most closely associated with his date paintings, collectively known as Today. For each painting, Kawara chose one of five canvas sizes, ranging from intimate to monumental, and one of three background colors: red, blue, or gray. He then painted the date as white text over this uniform background, applying consistent rules of spacing, to scale. If the painting was not completed by the end of the day, he destroyed it. The resulting works embodied a process Kawara referred to as making love to the days, an intimate practice of calling the day’s name into being in the brief moment that it is alive.[1]

On Kawara. DEC. 29, 1977 (Thursday, New York), 1977, from Today series, 1966–2013; acrylic on canvas; 8 x 10 in; shown with artist-made cardboard storage box, 10-1/2 x 10-3/4 x 2 in. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The paintings are displayed with their cardboard storage boxes, which Kawara lined with newspaper from the date of the painting. While the paintings look fresh, as if frozen in time, their storage boxes—worn, torn, yellowed, and stained—have begun to decay. In an essay in the exhibition catalog, Tom McCarthy calls the storage boxes coffins for the days.[2] While the creation of each date painting was intimately connected to a moment in time, each storage box entombed the date within a particular, often weighty, history.

On Kawara. MAY 20, 1981 (Wednesday, New York), 1981, from Today series, 1966–2013; acrylic on canvas; 8 x 10 in; shown with artist-made cardboard storage box, 10-1/2 x 10-3/4 x 2 in. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

If the date paintings offer a portrait of Kawara as a man who lives in the present, I Got Up and I Am Still Alive portray Kawara as a man on the move. Between 1968 and 1979, Kawara sent postcards to friends, each stating the time he got up on that particular day. From 1970 to 2000, Kawara sent telegrams with the more sinister message, “I am still alive.” The postcards and telegrams themselves are throwaways, banal ephemera of a life on the road. The images on the front of the postcards and the texts on the cards and telegrams are not as important as the practice of creating the messages and sending them.

On Kawara. APR – 1 1969, from the I Got Up series, 1968–79; stamped ink on postcard; 6 x 9 in. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

A perpetual traveler, Kawara started each day with a bid for social connection. Scientists have recently demonstrated that the practice of structuring each day around five daily practices—including when one wakes up and first engages in social contact—can treat mood disturbances associated with disruptions to one’s circadian rhythm.[3] Decades earlier, Kawara seems to have discovered this practice on his own, as a way of preparing the ground for his rootless life.[4]

On Kawara. I Read, 1966–95; 18 clothbound loose-leaf binders with plastic sleeves and inserted printed matter; 11-1/2 x 11-3/4 x 3 in (29.2 x 29.8 x 7.6 cm), each. Collection of the Artist. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Kawara’s series I Met, I Went, and I Read are three further exercises in self-documentation. I Met details the people Kawara saw each day; I Went shows Kawara’s quotidian paths through a city; I Read reproduces the daily newspaper stories Kawara consumed. These catalogs in turn reproduce On Kawara. They reveal his habits and interests, his partner’s constancy, his romantic transgressions.[5] They present a story that transcends his specific time and place, a poem that can be understood in any language.[6]

On Kawara. On Kawara—Silence, 2015; installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Photo: David Heald.

This thoughtful exhibition shows how a life revolves. On January 4, 1966, On Kawara made his first date painting, seated at a desk, hunched over a small canvas. Over the next forty-eight years, he returned to the same themes, again and again—a perpetual return beautifully manifested in the museum’s spiraling galleries.

If, as Claude Lévi-Strauss said, ritual is a medicine for the destruction of time, it is also a medicine for the rootlessness of a constant traveler.[7] Imagine belonging nowhere, arriving in a new hotel room every few days, crisscrossing the globe in a transnational existence. Would you, like On Kawara, seek structure in the pedestrian details of the everyday? Would you create artistic practices to help you stay in the present? For a visitor, this retrospective raises lingering questions: What is in the spaces between the records of the days? What more is left of a person?

On Kawara: Silence is on view at the Guggenheim Museum through May 3, 2015.

[1] On July 26, 1966, On Kawara made two date paintings. The first subtitle recants the day’s headlines; the second is subtitled “I make love to the days.” Ben Highmore, “‘I Make Love to the Days’: Accounting for On Kawara,” in On Kawara—Silence, ed. Jeffrey Weiss and Anne Wheeler (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2015), 207.

[2] Tom McCarthy, “Eighteen Semi-Connected Thoughts on Michel de Certeau, On Kawara, Fly Fishing and Various Other Things,” in On Kawara—Silence, 195.

[3] Ellen Frank, et al., “Two-Year Outcomes for Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy in Individuals with Bipolar I Disorder,” JAMA Psychiatry, September 2005, http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1108410#Abstract.

[4] In his catalog essay, the curator Jeffrey Weiss relates that the protagonist of a Katsusuke Miyauchi novel, seeking to lose his national identity and become stateless through constant travel, encounters a fictional On Kawara in the artist’s hotel room and is deeply impressed by him, coming to think of “Kawara” as the very model of a rootless soul. Jeffrey Weiss, “Bounded Infinity,” in On Kawara—Silence, 35–36.

[5] In the museum’s reading room, there is a limited edition of I Met—twelve volumes, representing twelve years. I flipped through the 1974 volume. One name stood out: Hiroko Hiraoka. It appeared nearly every day and was frequently the only name on days when Kawara saw no one else. It was the only name between Christmas and New Year’s Day and often the only name on the first or last few days in a new location. Without any additional information, and with more certitude than any government documentation or ritual jewelry could offer, On Kawara’s record names his life partner.

[6] I Met was Kawara’s response to a challenge from Kasper Koenig to “write a poem that can be understood anywhere.” On Kawara—Silence, 129.

[7] Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1966), quoted by Jeffrey Weiss, “Bounded Infinity,” in On Kawara—Silence, 25.