Murakami Saburō’s ‘Paper-Breaking’ performances, in which he burst through multiple sheets of kraft paper stretched across wooden frames with a sharp crack, were synonymous with the artist. He performed them on close to 40 occasions, between 1955 and 1994, throughout his artistic career. Murakami said that, in 1955, he was inspired to adopt this approach after his son came crashing through the fusuma (sliding door) of his locked room (where the artist was polishing up a plan for a new work to present in the 1st Gutai Art Exhibition) in a bid to get his father to play with him. From that time on, ‘Paper-Breaking’ became a physical means for him to present and investigate questions related to time and space, chance and inevitability, and the self and others.

With essays by Ikegami Tsukasa and Reiko Tomii.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.