Yoko Ono

Reflecting Transformation

From the book Yoko Ono: Instruction Paintings (1995)

“Thirty years ago, in 1962, I did an exhibition of instruction paintings at Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. A year before, I did a show of instruction paintings at AG Gallery in New York, but that was exhibiting canvases with instructions attached to them. Displaying just the instructions as paintings was going one step further, pushing visual art to its optimum conceptualism; it would open up a whole new horizon for the visual arts. I was totally excited by the idea and its visual possibilities. To make the point that the instructions were not themselves graphic images, I wanted the instructions to be typed.”

Conceptual and fluxus artist, poet and composer, Yoko Ono presents here an installation from her series of space transformations, which, as the artist has said, work mainly as an invocation “to constructing in your head, ” to urge viewers to make their own transformations as they move through space and time. “SPACE TRANSFORMER” as presented here, consists of security barriers which delineate a specific site in the space chosen for transformation.