Shiro Matsui, born in 1960, began showing his works in 1983 while a student at Kyoto City University of Arts, Department of Sculpture, and early on attracted attention as one of the leaders of the “Kansai New Wave”. While the influential trends of the 60s and 70s, such as Minimalism, Conceptualism, and the Mono-ha movement in Japan, were coming to an end, they continued to pursue free and original expression with a strong commitment to “painting” and “creating” without being beholden to any ism or trend.

From the early 1990s, Matsui began to create works using silicone rubber that were lustrous and had a unique sense of gravity, further sharpening his already existing interest in human perception and spatial awareness. The tubular hollow, extending like a hose, brings the outside space into the work, while at the same time creating a strange perceptual experience in which the viewer’s consciousness and imagination move in and out of the space.

Furthermore, from the late 1990s, he began to develop site-specific works using membrane structures and giant tubular balloons. The exhibition space is inserted into another world, and viewers passing between the two worlds, separated by a thin membrane, are overcome by a slight dizzying sensation in the colorful light while using their imagination to grasp the overall picture of the work. This idea of using his own artworks as a medium to create another dimension within the same space has now been expanded to the extraordinary project of placing outer space inside a glass container.

This exhibition, “SHIRO MATSUI between here and there is better than either here or there”, traces the artist’s creative and thoughtful journey to the present day through silicone rubber works created in the 1990s and works using uniquely shaped containers and aquariums, as well as a recent painting titled Garden Picture, and images and materials of installations he has created both in Japan and abroad.