Photo by Shingo Wakagi

Akio Nagasawa Gallery Ginza is pleased to announce the opening of the Exhibition by Yutaka Matsuzawa, Akio Nagasawa Collection commemorating the centenary of Yutaka Matsuzawa’s birth.

Matsuzawa started off as an artist in the field of avantgarde poetry, from where he gradually expanded his sphere of activity to symbolic poetry, abstract painting, and sculpture.
As a result of three days and three nights of intense deliberation following a mystical epiphany on June 1st, 1964, which had told him to “vanish the object,” on June 4th he eventually made the shift to art that doesn’t rely on a visual form. He began to create artworks composed exclusively of “verbal descriptions of the respective work’s conceptual foundation,” and continued to operate as a pioneering conceptual artist on an international level until his death.

Equally unique was also the style of his activities, revolving mainly around performances in which he recited concepts he had worked out, but also including presenting works at regular art exhibitions, and building international networks by organizing conceptional exhibits, distributed via “mail art.”

Matsuzawa also employed such personal styles as sending his works by letter, faxing them, or delivering them by hand, which is why it is assumed that a large number of his works are as yet unknown to the general public.

As this exhibition features numerous works that were realized in the form of private letters from the artist to myself, most of the works on display have never been shown in public. I invite you to come and encounter the acts of conceptual art that Matsuzawa has performed throughout his life, and the riddles he has left for us to solve.

– Akio Nagasawa
Akio Nagasawa Gallery