Hard, Soft, and All Lit Up with Nowhere to Go

Hard, Soft, and All Lit Up with Nowhere to Go is an exhibition of sculptural pieces developed in dialogue with the Noguchi Museum. Isamu Noguchi intended the Museum to be a resource. Through it and his work he hoped to have the anonymous impact on society of, say, the inventor of the temple or the chair.

What exactly has been absorbed from Noguchi in more than a decade of sitting with him is unclear, which is the best argument for a collaborative project. What is clear is that the natural laws that govern the universe they have made for themselves, and within which they operate, are non-doctrinal, anti-definitional, a-categorical, and intensely and ambiguously empirical, which suggest a strong gravitational relationship to his.

The exhibition unfolds through a series of pieces that operate within this condition, where material, light, and form remain in constant negotiation, resisting fixed definition and allowing meaning to emerge through experience.

An extension of a research and exhibition project initiated by OoCI with the Noguchi Museum in New York, Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi is a collaborative publication exploring the relationship between Isamu Noguchi and Greece. Co-published by Atelier Éditions and D.A.P. as a two-volume box set, it examines the influence of Greek culture across his work in sculpture, design, and architecture.

Through visual essays, letters, photographs, sketches, and previously unseen material, the publication sheds light on Noguchi’s engagement with Greece’s history and material culture. Additional texts explore his collaborations with figures such as Buckminster Fuller and Martha Graham, while reconsidering his legacy in contemporary art and design.

EDITED BY Ananda Pellerin, Objects of Common Interest.
INTRODUCTION BY Objects of Common Interest.
TEXT BY Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Hsiao-Yun Chu, Dakin Hart, Isamu Noguchi, Nicolas Paissios, Jannis Varelas.