Takesada Matsutani: ‘drop in time’
The Japanese artist talks about how he came to join the Gutai Art Association in 1963, moved to Paris in 1966 and how vinyl adhesive glue and graphite have sustained a practice ‘streaming into infinity’
The Japanese artist talks about how he came to join the Gutai Art Association in 1963, moved to Paris in 1966 and how vinyl adhesive glue and graphite have sustained a practice ‘streaming into infinity’
Coming of age in postwar Japan, artist Takesada Matsutani found himself longing ‘to make something beyond the canvas’. Gravitating to likeminded artists coalescing as the Gutai Art Association – gutai translating roughly to ‘concrete’ – and working increasingly with the new material of vinyl adhesive glue to make bulbous, three dimensional paintings, the artist eventually moved to Europe in 1966, finding employment in Stanley William Hayter’s Parisian engraving studio, Atelier 17, where engraving allowed Matsutani to ‘draw his imaginations’.
Takesada Matsutani's show ‘drop in time’, runs at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK, from 29 September 2018 – 1 January 2019. The artist’s first show at the location, it includes new paintings and a site-specific installation, alongside a selection of prints dating from the 1960s.
For more information, visit the Hauser & Wirth website here.
A Frieze Studios production; all works courtesy: © Takesada Matsutani
