by Art Front Gallery Location: Art Front Gallery
Artist(s): Akinori MATUSMOTO
Date: 7 Jan - 29 Jan 2012
Akinori Matsumoto has been creating the works making sounds (Ongu, Sound Object) since early 1980s and exhibiting sound installations at various locations including not only museums but outdoors. Most of his works are the combinations of bamboos, and he rotates or moves them like windup toys by using wind, water and electricity. Utilizing shadows and lights, he has been constantly creating simple and humorous installations. There were long lines of people waiting at the entrance of his works to see his installation, taking its space as a part of material, exhibited at Water and Land Niigata Art Festiaval in 2009, and Setouchi International Art Festival in 2010.
When I firstly saw Matsumoto’s works was at Water and Land Niigata Art Festival. I rather experienced than saw it, and it was a thorough shocking experience. It is needless to say the historical correlation between Impressionism and the invention of tube colors that the development of art after modern ages has been along with that of technology. Large-scale exhibitions at the museums in recent years show us the history of the materials and technologies’ development by not only the artists but also the technical experts on their background. Art certainly includes many elements to embody what we’ve never seen before, and the artists of next generations create different art based on current existing technologies. What is overwhelming at Matsumoto’s works is that he does not depend on such stream and just utilizes simple structure and materials which are similar to those of electricity and physics that we learned from elementary and junior high-school. Matsumoto completely materializes our desire for art to see what is unsubstantial and we haven’t seen before by the process of imagination and manual works such as cutting and combining trees, pasting papers, tying strings and casting lights. That is what most surprises us when we face with his works. The existence of Matsumoto’s works in the contemporary age is closely related to the root of existence of art itself.
