Categories can be presented as choices, but more often, they designate limitations to our freedom. Between options lurks an or, a subtle warning of our this or that restrictions.

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garons: Art of the In-Between, the exhibition opening this week at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, operates differently. The show, honoring iconic Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, is divided into several categorical pairings, such as Then/Now, East/West, High/Low, and even Clothes/Not Clothes. Yet the slash stuck between each pairing isnt intended as an or. Instead, its meant to demarcate an in-between, a space that turns dichotomies into cacophonous harmonies.

The exhibition, decisively described as not a retrospective, features 150 garments from Kawakubos collections, divided into binary categories she then proceeds to break down. All of the pieces are presented at eye-level, so the viewer can properly observe the magic of their construction. There is no wall text whatsoever, a nod to Kawakubos consistent refusal to define her work in rigid terms. The meaning is that there is no meaning , she said in 1995.