“Everything you can see is created by man” says Susumu Matsuura pointing out of the window. Susumu however rarely depicts what he sees out of the window. He works with feelings, states of mind and the intangible. His portraiture is unique inasmuch that most of the faces are obscured and the viewer can project whomsoever they like onto each body.
I’m at The Daiwa Foundation Japan House for the private view of THE INKBLOT LOOKED LIKE ME listening to the artist in conversation with Dr Lee Campbell. Over the course of an hour, Susumu opens up about his depression and how his self-prescribed art therapy ended up on gallery walls. Dr Campbell raises a fascinating theory about the “ventriloquism” of art, whereby the alter-ego of an artist speaks through the canvas in the same way that a performer voices a puppet. The metaphor is helpful in understanding Matsuura’s work, as he can be oblique about attributing any specific identity.
In the main gallery room, his silkscreened images speak for themselves. They command more attention than the wallspace they occupy, partly due to a vivid but unpredictable pallete. Where some works dazzle with colour, others use contrasting, subdued tones more akin to after-images or hypnogogic illusions. A low table-top is covered in limited editions as though they were glossy magazines on a coffee table. Sadly visitors are not allowed to pick these up for closer inspection.
A second room is more esoteric. These pieces are more fragile and varied and for this reason create a stronger sense of intimacy. For a brief moment I felt I was walking through a virtual sketchbook of ideas I shouldn’t really see. This fits with the overall theme of the exhibition: The symmetry of contrast. What we have here is not reflection. It is the two-sided nature of human beings, physical objects and life in general.
Visit Daiwa Foundation, London NW1. 30th January – 28th February 2019 9:30am – 5pm. Admission is free. The gallery is just a few mins walk from Baker Street tube.
More images can be seen on my Instagram post.