Tohru Matsushita “Open/Close City” Part.2 “Room of Joban”
Session： 2018/1/12 Fri ? 2/3 Sat
＊closed on Sun. Mon. Tue and public holidays
Opening reception：1/12 Fri, 18:00 ? 20:00
Venue： SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Tohru Matsushita’s “The Room of Joban” from January 12, 2018 as 『Open / Close City』Part 2. Tohru Matsushita, born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1984, graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts Graduates school of Inter Media Art in 2010. Matsushita, since encountering graffiti culture when he was a high school student in the US, has kept research on graffiti, street cultures and histories of the representations associated with these cultures and reflected these experiences in his works.
In 2008, as a college student, Matsushita conducted the project ”FRESH” that changed from an exhibition into a movement with many young artists, then launched “Tokyo Urban Arrrrt”(2011) that put a question how we live and create works in a city, and established an artist collective ”SIDE CORE” with Sakie Takasu in 2012. While conducting movements focusing on actual social problem, Matsushita, as an individual artist, goes into the creation of paintings for an movements in a history.
This time, Matsushita creates works with a keyword ”Joban”. Geographically Joban railroads and Tone river lie in Joban. Whereas, to Matsushita, the area is an representative site of “boring suburb” and “workplace” where his creative studio locates. Matsushita, as a returnee, who had assumed his own identity had mainly depended on cultures in the US, once realized the change in which the amount of the time he spent to think about himself and his creation in Joban exceeded the amount of that in the US. When he realized “boring suburb” along national highway constitutes himself, he discovered the multiple histories of the land, the objects and substrates to be selected.
Matsushita`s drawing method uses the swing of pendulum. Then where the center of the swing is placed matters. The shifting of where Matsushita`s identity lies from the US to Joban has effects on where the axis is placed and how the swing moves about in his works. His new collage works of geometrical circles drawn by such swings constitutes this exhibition. Matsushita thinks this shifting tracks as visualized streams of time, just like repeated routines of daily lives. When he combines the collage method with drawings by pendulum, the timeline is cut off, the center of the swings shifts and another phase of the time emerges.
Matsushita says “What extremely cool to me is locomotion(as a transportation. I create things with a wood board abandoned on the road in a city or the path along the rice fields, the explore the timelines behind them. I`d like to challenge abstract paintings with such materials.”
This is his trial of calling the historical backgrounds but for specific emotion, with calling a painting as a material by a painting as a process. Please enjoy the Matsushita`s method with pendulum and his new works eagerly challenging the positioning of his career.
（Translation：Motoharu Ito)
Session： 2018/1/12 Fri ? 2/3 Sat
＊closed on Sun. Mon. Tue and public holidays
Opening reception：1/12 Fri, 18:00 ? 20:00
Venue： SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Tohru Matsushita’s “The Room of Joban” from January 12, 2018 as 『Open / Close City』Part 2. Tohru Matsushita, born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1984, graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts Graduates school of Inter Media Art in 2010. Matsushita, since encountering graffiti culture when he was a high school student in the US, has kept research on graffiti, street cultures and histories of the representations associated with these cultures and reflected these experiences in his works.
In 2008, as a college student, Matsushita conducted the project ”FRESH” that changed from an exhibition into a movement with many young artists, then launched “Tokyo Urban Arrrrt”(2011) that put a question how we live and create works in a city, and established an artist collective ”SIDE CORE” with Sakie Takasu in 2012. While conducting movements focusing on actual social problem, Matsushita, as an individual artist, goes into the creation of paintings for an movements in a history.
This time, Matsushita creates works with a keyword ”Joban”. Geographically Joban railroads and Tone river lie in Joban. Whereas, to Matsushita, the area is an representative site of “boring suburb” and “workplace” where his creative studio locates. Matsushita, as a returnee, who had assumed his own identity had mainly depended on cultures in the US, once realized the change in which the amount of the time he spent to think about himself and his creation in Joban exceeded the amount of that in the US. When he realized “boring suburb” along national highway constitutes himself, he discovered the multiple histories of the land, the objects and substrates to be selected.
Matsushita`s drawing method uses the swing of pendulum. Then where the center of the swing is placed matters. The shifting of where Matsushita`s identity lies from the US to Joban has effects on where the axis is placed and how the swing moves about in his works. His new collage works of geometrical circles drawn by such swings constitutes this exhibition. Matsushita thinks this shifting tracks as visualized streams of time, just like repeated routines of daily lives. When he combines the collage method with drawings by pendulum, the timeline is cut off, the center of the swings shifts and another phase of the time emerges.
Matsushita says “What extremely cool to me is locomotion(as a transportation. I create things with a wood board abandoned on the road in a city or the path along the rice fields, the explore the timelines behind them. I`d like to challenge abstract paintings with such materials.”
This is his trial of calling the historical backgrounds but for specific emotion, with calling a painting as a material by a painting as a process. Please enjoy the Matsushita`s method with pendulum and his new works eagerly challenging the positioning of his career.
（Translation：Motoharu Ito)
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