On display will be new and recent works made from aluminum, wood, fabric and other materials. A recent graduate of Kyoto City University of Arts, Matsumura explores issues of perception, the daily environment and mechanical reproduction in his art. The works at Take Ninagawa build upon this background to address the alchemical properties of everyday materials.

One example of this is a new series of untitled sculptures made from cast aluminum. Painted in bright, primary colors, the three sculptures in the series resemble freestanding sheets of crumpled paper, and are all identical. Matsumura says that he was inspired to make the sculptures after coming across a car accident. Attracted to the seemingly random folds in the car’s metal, as well as the extreme force of the impact required to make the folds, he set out to recreate a fragment of the crashed car as precisely as possible. In making multiple copies of the same work, Matsumura underscores the absurdity of this impulse, turning a unique instance—an act of god—into an infinitely reproducible simulacrum. Similarly, an earlier work entitled Boki (2008), referring to the onomatopoeia for an object snapping in two, attempts to recreate a piece of splintered wood Matsumura found in his studio. In making this work, Matsumura took planks of scrap wood and snapped them until he was finally able to replicate his source image.

While such works play upon the dynamic between freak occurrences and perfectible technology, others investigate how materials absorb meaning through use. One untitled soft sculpture resembles a disembodied torso covered in a T-shirt. The T-shirt bulges grotesquely, and closer inspection reveals that the torso is made from rolled bundles of yet more T-shirts. All the shirts used in making the work were worn by Matsumura, discarded on his bedroom floor and then accumulated over time before being used as art material. For Matsumura, the shirts must go through a transformative process, no matter how simple, before they can be turned into something meaningful.

Further reflecting an accumulative aesthetic, the large site-specific installation Flesh (2009) is made from hundreds of crumpled pages torn from pornographic magazines piled upon each other. Matsumura folded each page to accentuate, but also distort, the flesh-toned contours of the naked models’ bodies. Here Matsumura responds to the material qualities of the pornography magazines—the glossiness of the paper, the saturated colors of the photographs—but also plays with the way that such magazines serve as receptacles for people’s desires. Essentially a pile of unfulfilled fantasies, Flesh thus takes on both sculptural and psychological volume. Also included in exhibition is a large-scale wall installation and other works. Yuuki Matsumura graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2007. This is his first exhibition at Take Ninagawa Gallery.

* The text was provided by Take Ninagawa.