I am still trying to wrap my head around the enormity of what Duncan Mclaren’s accomplishing in his day-by-day, work-by-work, trip-by-trip, show-by-show documentation of On Kawara’s life. But without it, I somehow would have not realized that Kawara painted one Today series work in Salt Lake City.
I say somehow because I didn’t clock it when I saw this painting in 2012, at David Zwirner’s show, “Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 other cities.” Which was very much a show about Kawara making date paintings all over the world/in New York City. Or so I thought.
Actually it was a show of date paintings made all over the world, which is not the same thing. Mclaren’s project of combing through the data of Kawara’s oeuvre, is about the making, and of finding the glimpses of the artist and his life in work that seems to obscure it.