New York-based artist Ei Arakawa stages semi-choreographed group actions combining dance, improvisations, and semi-raw objects.  Interested in art-making from start to finish—the preparing, waiting, adjusting, creating, consuming—he plays with the social spectacle of art. Often presenting an act of construction followed by one of rapid deconstruction (and reconstruction, and so on), his performances use and misuse sculptural objects in states of change.

Arakawa’s exhibition in The Front Room points to various stages in the production of art collectives by bringing together friendships, actual artist-groups, and different local contexts. In a performance on May 9, Arakawa painted metal duct parts he had covered with ephemera he gathered from New York-based artist groups. Also using the ducts as tools to make spray-paint drawings, he translates the movements of art collectives into abstract timelines and fictional territories.

Participants include: Herd Instinct 360°, Cinema Zero, Skul records, Hurray, Public-Holiday Projects, North Drive Press, Grand Openings, and The Steins.

Ei Arakawa was born in Iwaki, Japan, in 1977, and currently lives and works in New York City. Arakawa’s performances have been staged at exhibitions at MUMOK, Vienna (2008); FrancoSoffiantino ArteContemporanea, Turin (2008); Kunsthalle Zürich Parallel, Zürich (2007); Performa07, New York (2007); Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2007), and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2006), among others.