"It’s a painting. It’s a game that doesn’t end. Because I can enjoy it until the day I die."
Today, On Kawara is considered as one of the major figures of conceptual art, having begun his series of Date Paintings in 1966. Since the mid-1960s, On Kawara's work has relied heavily on biographical data from his experience of space-time. In his paintings and drawings, he plays on the relationship between the meaning of language and its visual materiality. Process, situation, and time – all essential to On Kawara’s work – are articulated as a kind of discourse on life, objectively relating his experience to the world. Absent from all social life, including the openings of his own exhibitions, On Kawara’s œuvre is, through the ritualisation of a creative process and an ordering of fragmented moments, of a monumental and universal scope which extends through time.