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Arakawa and Madeline Gins: The Poetic Jump

Exhibition at the American Academy of Arts and Letters

On view September 26, 2026 – February 7, 2027

Opening Celebration on Saturday, September 26, 2026, 4–7pm

Arakawa and Gins: The Poetic Jump surveys the personal and creative partnership between Arakawa and Madeline Gins, tracing how their collaboration led the pair to interrogate what they called “the mistaken concept of the unavoidable death.” Like many of their peers in the New York avant-garde, Arakawa and Gins spent decades probing the mechanisms of human consciousness. By the 1990s, this inquiry had developed into what they termed procedural architecture: installations and buildings designed to reverse the course of human destiny. Their Reversible Destiny Architecture — with its undulating floors, distorted spaces, and saturated color — was built to destabilize the senses and, in their words, recompose human vitality.

Curated by Noa Wesley, the exhibition brings together painting, poetry, film, and a full-scale installation, offering visitors several distinct ways to enter the pair’s logic. Among the works on view is Ubiquitous Site X, 1987–91/2026, an early installation that can be traversed in darkness across its uneven floor. As Arakawa and Madeline Gins wrote, these are sites built for learning “how not to die” — an invitation extended, in their words, so that “sooner, later, after, and always, justice be done to the poetic jump.”

For more information, please visit https://www.artsandletters.org/exhibitions?slug=arakawa-and-madeline-gins-the-poetic-jump