TAB Event - Naoki Matsuda Exhibition

Naoki Matsuda Exhibition

This event has ended.
At INAX Gallery 1 & 2
Media: Installation, Art Talk

The works of Naoki Matsuda consist of installations that make novel use of materials. "View of the Flow" uses flotsam from the Sumida river to create a 116 meter long sequence of packing materials laid out like the "flow" of a river. "Fingerprint Flower" takes Matsuda's own fingerprints using a woodwork bond and turns them into flower petals that form a 1.7 meter high tree. "Hair Dress" features a knitted ring of hair measuring 3 meters across. "Tobacco Board" and "Tobacco Road" are pieces covered in cigarette butts, while "Dust Cat" is a piece measuring 2.5m in all directions, made by collecting dust floating around in the air. All these installations are by turns surprising and humorous, provoking laughter from audiences.
Among the most outstanding works, however, is the piece "Walking Man", inspired by the sculptures of Giacometti, in which Matsuda stuck innumerable grains of natto (fermented soybeans) to his entire body, and the performance entitled "Self and Soil", where the artist buried himself in a mountain of earth with only his head sticking out.
Recently, Matsuda has become increasingly interested in cutlery and tableware as materials. On display at this exhibition is a 3 meter apron made from rice and other tableware installations. While posing himself such questions as "why are these edible", "what are houses for", and "why does art carry on", Matsuda painstakingly pasted 15 kilograms of rice onto the work grain by grain over a period of 5 months in order to complete the piece. These works that take rice as their motif and theme provoke laughter, but also a sense of sacred prayer directed towards the fact of simply living.

Artist talk: August 1st (Fri) 18:00-19:00