Untitled (TORINUKE)

1977 Born in Fukuoka 2002 BA, Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design 2004 MA, Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design Tomoya Matsuzaki was born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan in 1977. He moved to the U.K in 1997, completing his BA at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2002, followed by an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2004. He currently lives and works in London. In addition to producing his own work, he has been involved in a wide range of activities such as self-curating exhibitions and launching project spaces from his perspective as an artist. Matsuzaki’s paintings are depicted on thick slabs of plaster that have been shaped and molded by the artist’s own hand. Matsuzaki, who is interested in “visually expressing the rhythms and their conditions that remain hidden in space,” produces work through overlaying both conscious and subconscious brushstrokes, and improvised movements. Nevertheless, due to the rhythms of space never being fixed and in place contrary to the intentions of the artist, the work in itself manifest as places in which two contradicting worlds coexist. Paintings are worlds that possess a certain depth, and thus what could be described as painterly space is something that indeed exists. On the one hand, they could be regarded as a physical mass consisting of plaster and paint. Matsuzaki selects irregularly shaped plaster slabs as his support medium, and further drills holes into it in order to manipulate space and matter that are both multidimensional elements. Through such means, how does he manage to create paintings while achieving a sense of harmony between the two? Such could be regarded as the very core aspect of Matsuzaki’s endeavor. His recent exhibitions include, “Crossing” (Hagiwara Projects / 2019), “A creak in the stair” (SIXSECOND, / 2018), and “Odd Metre” (White Conduit Projects / 2017). In 2018 his work was short-listed for the John Moores Painting Prize, a public painting competition and exhibition priding a history of over 60 years in the U.K, with former prize recipients including Peter Blake, David Hockey, and Peter Doig.