Empty Gallery is pleased to present Yutaka Matsuzawa: Vanishing in the Wilderness. Co-curated by Alan Longino and Reiko Tomii, and realized with the generous assistance of the Matsuzawa family, this exhibition represents the first overview of this pivotal artist’s practice in Sinophone East Asia. Widely considered the leading pioneer of Japanese conceptual art, Matsuzawa’s practice synthesized a diverse array of Eastern and Western knowledge — including parapsychology, Pure Land Buddhism, quantum physics — in the pursuit of artistic strategies for expressing the immaterial sphere. Split like an atom between the gallery’s two levels — generative both separately and together — the 19th floor features canonical works from Matsuzawa’s post-revelation period, while the 18th floor presents earlier paintings and collages spanning the mid 1950s through the early 1960s — works which have rarely been shown outside of Japan.
This exhibition begins with a call for proposals from 1964. Calling for artists to exhibit their work with Matsuzawa in the highlands of central Japan, three aphoristic directions instructed would-be participants:
Don’t Believe Matter
Don’t Believe Mind
Don’t Believe Senses
As instructions, they are formally conscious of the dominant Conceptual art being practiced globally at the time. However, as poetry, they conjure a speculative world that helps the individual temporarily return to a world of dissolution and disappearance.
EXTERNAL MANIFESTATIONS
September 11, 2021 – March 16, 2022
Techno
Tishan Hsu
Fondazione Museion, Bolzano
October 16, 2021 – February 27, 2022
The Principle of Hope
Xper.Xr
Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing
October 21 – December 23, 2021
skin-screen-grass
Tishan Hsu
Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York City
October 28, 2021 – January 23, 2022
Soft Water Hard Stone
Jes Fan
New Museum Triennial, New York City
Panel discussion on December 16: Mediated Bodies
November 6, 2021 – April 4, 2022
You and I don’t live on the same planet
James T. Hong
Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
December 3, 2021 – February 13, 2022
Animal
James T. Hong
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
December 9 2021 – March 6, 2022
Sex Ecologies
Jes Fan
Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway
December 9 – 23, 2021
Jahresgaben 2021
Taro Masushio
Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn
December 30 2021 – March 20 2022
Sounds as Silence: the Academic Value of Life
Xper.Xr
Guangzhou Art Academy Museum
Empty Gallery
18th & 19th Floor Grand Marine Center
3 Yue Fung Street, Tin Wan, Hong Kong
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am – 7pm
emptygallery.com
