Assemblage in an Expanded Field

This chapter offers a close-reading of a large-scale exhibition—held in 2024 at the Venice Biennale—by the Tokyo-based artist Yuko Mohri, reading her project an assemblage in the “expanded field,” a notion adapted from Rosalind Krauss's influential account of postwar sculpture. Proceeding to compare Mohri's work to a wide range of postwar and contemporary practices—including multisensory works by Mario Merz and Carolee Schneeman, and kinetic works by Fischli & Weiss, Hans Haacke, and Jean Tinguely—the chapter considers how her practice may be envisioned as a case study for the revisionist research of assemblage-based art that appeals to multiple senses and that requires extended periods of time to experience. Reflecting on Mohri's project in relation to Nakanishi's, the chapter concludes with an argument for the study of sculpture that is more comparative, intergenerational, and global in scope—and therefore is resistant to traditional and institutional biases towards monographic study and towards the exclusive focus on national and local contexts.