A leading figure in Japanese conceptual art, Yutaka Matsuzawa's writings and artworks dematerialise the art object through his rendering of the invisible and the impermanent.
Read MoreBorn in Shimosuwa, Japan, Matsuzawa grew up during the Fifteen Years' War (1930–1946). The same inability to anticipate and prevent destruction paved the way for an artistic practice centred around foresight and immanence.
Matsuzawa studied architecture at Waseda University in Tokyo (1943–1946) but opted out from the profession, choosing to teach mathematics at a night school in his hometown, while turning his interest to art and poetry.
In 1955, Matsuzawa visited the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship. In 1956, he moved to New York on a Japan Society Fellowship, where he attended Columbia University, studying philosophy, religion, and art history.
Yutaka Matsuzawa's conceptual works contemplate the impermanence of existence by inviting the viewer to conceive of alternative realms and semi-formed objects through absence, allusion, and text-based instructions
In New York, Matsuzawa developed his notion of Psi, referencing the parapsychological phenomenon of clairvoyant abilities beyond the five senses. This fascination informed early works like The Bird of Psi Nr. 9 (1958), a pair of brown watercolour wings framing a small brown circle on folded paper.
These early conceptual works earned Matsuzawa the nickname Mr. Psi. It was only after a revelation in 1964, in which the artist claims to have heard a voice commanding him to 'vanish objects', that Matsuzawa transitioned to a text-based practice.
Matsuzawa's new body of work centred around the idea of kannen, meaning idea or meditative visualisation. White Circle (1967), for instance, dematerialises the artwork by asking viewers to envision the missing portion of a photograph with their eyes closed.
Inspired by Buddhist practices and notions of emptiness, Matsuzawa's artworks offered an alternative to existing ideas around conceptual art by redefining the artwork as an object that lives in the viewer's consciousness.
In 1969, Matsuzawa's estate in Suwa became a gathering place for artists and critics. Known as the Nirvana School, it helped nurture an entire generation of young conceptual artists, which included Michio Horikawa and Tadashi Maeyama.
In 1970, Matsuzawa held his first international exhibition at the Tokyo Biennale, alongside Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, and Sol LeWitt. In the same year, Matsuzawa's writing was featured in two bulletins of the influential art magazine Art & Project, published by the Amsterdam gallery of the same name. The second bulletin was then featured in the landmark conceptual art exhibition Information at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Matsuzawa's interest in death posited it not as an end point, but a chance for unending possibility. My Own Death (Paintings Existing Only in Time) (1970) asked viewers to walk across an empty room and envision the artist's death, their own death, and the 'future thousand trillions' of deaths of human beings.
Similarly, The Nine Meditation Chambers (1977), 12 sheets of paper featuring gridded diagrams, instructed viewers to 'contemplate' the paper and 'incantate' the nine elements in a precise order, as if to be transported to another place.
Yutaka Matsuzawa's works have shown widely across Asia, Europe, and North America.
Select solo exhibitions include Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (2021); Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2019); Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles (2019); Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo (2017); Brigitte March Gallery, Stuttgart (2017); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2012); Okazaki Tamako Gallery, Tokyo (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986), and Aoki Gallery, Tokyo (1963).
Selected group exhibitions include National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Gwacheon (2019); Tokyo Municipal Museum of Art (2013, 2004, 2003); Chino City Museum of Art (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2002); Queens Museum, New York (1999); Venice Biennale (1984); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1970).
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2022
