In 1977, the Japanese artist Noriyuki Haraguchi perplexed visitors to documenta 6 with an unusual piece of work. The room created by Haraguchi was dominated by a large steel basin painted black. The basin was filled with used oil, presenting a brightly glistening, yet completely still and opaque surface suggesting an enormous depth and evoking the ideal of a calm, smooth sea. From the most banal waste product, Haraguchi had created an image of great clarity. With it, the artist referred both to the radical settings of minimal art and to the large, reflecting laquered surfaces used in traditional Japanese architecture. Haraguchi's other sculptural works also tend to revolve around these two extremes - the model-like recreation of real objects and the surface that has become tangible. The catalogue raisonné features the artist's works from the last 38 years, presenting an oeuvre which both encompasses elemental intentions of sculpture in the sixties and seventies and is at the same time characterized by an awareness of historical and geographical identity. The artist: Noriyuki Haraguchi was born in 1946 in Yokosuka, Japan. He studied art at Nihon University where he first concentrated on oil painting. Since 1968, he has taken part in a large number of solo and group exhibitions in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Exhibition Schedule: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, München 28.4.-22.7.2001