Osamu Matsuda “Nothing is Serious”

Kitakore Building

Finished

Artists

Osamu Matsuda, Hiroya Koto, Yasuyo Ide, Gedo no Susume, Takashi Fuzawa

Osamu Matsuda is a young artist who strikes people as a contrast between his serious academic background as an art student, and his love of folly including dirty jokes and one-liners. “Nothing is Serious,” the quite optimistic title of this show, is typical of his style and goes against the current mode of taking a gloomy view of the world and life.

Matsuda’s pragmatic theory is based on his own heroic background, which he has previously not much discussed. Raised in a town rife with poverty and crime, his family encountered many difficulties and at one point he was taken into a juvenile detention facility. Yet he has never taken a “serious” view of this dramatic life, instead speaking of his past like it is full of funny stories told as a person from Kansai. Laughter is a survival instinct to Matsuda, who says, “I would die if I had to face reality, as it’s too heavy.” “Nothing is serious” is the motto of people in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, and at the same time a world-view Matsuda has adopted to survive this current society riddled with poverty, racism, and suicide. This exhibition takes this outlook as its theme.

Curator: Chim↑Pom

Schedule

Oct 3 (Sat) 2015-Oct 25 (Sun) 2015