produced in the same collaboration with Xerox. Takamatsu xeroxed typescript of four chapters from an "unfinished story" of the alphabet. The first chapter started with "a b c d e ... " and finished with "x y z," the book moving on to "aa ab ac ... aaa bbb ... " in subsequent chapters, working through the fourth chapter, which covered the entire second volume without exhausting the fourletter combinations. This unusual "print" amounts to a dissection of words or their elements in a raw, nonfunctional state. Writing Takamatsu was not considered an art critic but was frequently in conversation with art critic contemporaries. Japanese critics frequently referenced statements by Euro-american artists and artists like Marcel Duchamp influenced the anti-art movements of Japan. Takamatsu's writing was loosely theoretical in nature, making marked observations about the interconnectedness of sociality and objects. In a series of essays titled “Sekai kakudai keikaku” (“A Plan for World Ex-pansion”), Takamatsu portrays an ever-evolving complexification of social ties. Yoshida Kenchi describes Takamatsu's rose as reminiscent of Allan Kaprow's description of happenings, moving through imaginary and hallucinatory moments with a tone more passive than active. Each detail leads to another without any rational direction as objects keep piling up and getting stuck to one another. "This cacophony of things, images, events, and bodies in Takamatsu's essay “Fuzai tai no tameni [For That Which That Does Not Exist]" turn into four lengthy rope-like sentences meandering through the complex intertwining of subjecthood and objecthood. His reflection on everyday experience recounts the boredom and countless things combining into interminable series that hopelessly postpone the conclusion." Exhibitions Selected solo exhibitions 1966 Jiro Takamatsu “Identification”, Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo 1996 Jiro Takamatsu at Present, Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata and Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Tokyo 1967 Jiro Takamatsu, Naviglio2-Galleria d’Arte, Milano, Italia 1999 Jiro Takamatsu―Paintings and Drawings for “Shadow”, The National Museum of Art, Osaka 2000 Jiro Takamatsu―1970s Three-dimensional Works and Others, Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba 2004 Jiro Takamatsu―Universe of His Thoughts, Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka 2009 Permanent Collection 3 Jiro Takamatsu Collection in Hiroshima “Point’ ‘Line’ ‘Form of Absence”, Hiroshima-City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima 2011 Jiro Takamatsu Words and Things – Refinement and Tautology – NADiff Gallery, Tokyo 2014 Takamatsu Jiro: Mysteries, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 2015 Jiro Takamatsu: Trajectory of Work, The National Museum of Art, Osaka