I Am Still Alive (Four Telegrams) 1973

On Kawara sent these telegrams using the Deutsche Bundespost, in 1973, bearing a succinct yet profound message: "I Am Still Alive." It's like a conceptual gut punch. These aren't paintings in the traditional sense, but they share a similar concern with materiality, a kind of 'thing-ness.' The texture of the paper, the uniformity of the typeface, the precise lines that structure each telegram. Then there's the smudged ink of Kawara’s handwriting that breaks the monotony of the printed form, an assertion of presence against the mechanical. Look at the repeated phrase, its a quiet scream against the void. It reminds me a little of some of the text based work of someone like Jenny Holzer, in that both use language, and the delivery systems for language, in order to communicate something existential. But while Holzer’s Truisms are decontextualized, Kawara roots his claim to existence in the specific time and place of each telegram. We're all just trying to leave a mark, aren't we?