Yuka Tsuruno Gallery is pleased to present Blind, Tomona Matsukawa’s solo exhibition from Saturday, May 20 to Saturday, June 17, 2017. In this exhibition, Matsukawa will exhibit new group of paintings based on her interview with women, as well as a new installation piece using mirrors.

　Matsukawa is consistently interested in human nature and inner life of people visible in the residual signs of everyday life, such as damaged high heels, thrown off clothes or scars on a body. Through her characteristically realistic paintings, Matsukawa has been attempting to convert the scar-like marks that are commonly considered to be disreputable to a different set of values by reconfiguring them on her flat and beautiful painterly surfaces. In recent years, she conducts multiple interviews with women of her own generation, and uses memorable phrases from these conversations as the subjects and titles of her works, which includes not only paintings but also new methods of expression such as an installation with mirrors.

　The works presented in this exhibition are based on the interviews with women living in big cities, following the works of the same theme exhibited at Roppongi Crossing (Mori Art Museum, 2016). As symbolized in the traces such as underwear marks, spoiled makeups and coffee stains, these women tend to be regarded at the first glance as living in loneliness and disappointment. However, Matsukawa felt during the interviews that each woman living such a life still explores the meaning of her life and remains hopeful while facing her lot. As indicated in the exhibition title “Blind”, the exhibited works represent the big gulf between the “interior” of these women and the “exterior” of the outside world’s gaze, and how they are mutually blind to each other.

　Moreover, there are “internal” and “external” views of every individual. Much like her paintings that strive to capture not the outward appearance but the internal life of the depicted persons, Matsukawa’s new series of mirror installations throw the viewers, reflected in the mirrors, into the space where these views crisscross with one another. In this exhibition, Matsukawa explores the boarder between “inside” and “outside”, shifts between them, and aims to produce an encounter that may reverse these two states, while accepting their mutual blindness.

Artist Profile

Tomona Matsukawa (b.1987, Aichi) graduated from Tama Art University in 2011, having specialized in oil painting. Her recent exhibitions include Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice (Mori Museum, Tokyo), Shell Artist Selection (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2013) and Artist Meets Kurashiki vol.12 Tomona Matsukawa (Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama, 2016). She was awarded the Fukazawa Ichiro Memorial Award (2011) and The 25th Holbein Scholarship (2010). Her works were added to the collection of Ohara Museum and Mori Museum as well as Takahashi Collection.

Exhibition Outline

Tomona Matsukawa, Blind
Date: May 20 – June 17, 2017
Gallery opening hours: Tue – Thu, Sat 11:00-18:00 / Fri 11:00-20:00
Closed on Monday, Sunday, National holiday
Opening reception: Saturday March 11, 18:00-20:00
Venue: Yuka Tsuruno Gallery
1-33-10-3F, Higashi-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo