Keiko Moriuchi

Born: Osaka,1943.
Period of Membership in GUTAI: 1968-1972

Moriuchi had frequently participated in Gutai art exhibitions even before she became a member of the group in 1968. She first met Jiro Yoshihara in 1962, at which time she was still a student at Osaka Shoin Women’s University. Her invitation to join Gutai was put on hold as she was planning to study abroad in Paris; however, she was encouraged to change her destination based on Yoshihara’s recommendation that she “should go to New York instead of Paris”. She moved to the United States in 1965, taking a room in the building where Ad Reinhart lived as her combined home and atelier. The catalyst for Moriuchi’s joining Gutai was the 1968 New Artists’ Exhibition, where she exhibited a work in which she lined up 108 white floor cushions. While the gesture of repeating this colorless white was reminiscent of minimalist art, the form of the cushions lined up in a row resembled a ladder, and the number ”108” also bore significance. It can be said that this was a work suspended somewhere in the space between meaninglessness and meaning.