Every image that Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara paints would make sense outside of the context of art. On the surface, they are simply numbers, letters, dates, maps and routes, first names and surnames, and newspaper clippings. They could have come from day planners, calendars, scrapbooks, or rosters. In On Kawara: 10 Tableaux and 16,952 Pages, from the Dallas Museum of Art, they represent a formidable boy of work that challenges “the very idea of what it means to be alive and sentient in the world.”

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