01 august 2023, Flor Linckens
Ruri Matsumoto: Lines of light
Until 26 August, Livingstone Gallery in The Hague is showing a series of works by Ruri Matsumoto. This Japanese-German artist creates dynamic works that are characterised by geometric abstraction, but also by a certain expressiveness and spontaneity. In her work, Matsumoto visually references cities and landscapes, and in particular the way that light moves in the city. She subsequently transforms these landscapes into lines of light. In doing so, the artist is looking for new possibilities within the medium of painting.
Matsumoto's paintings are recognisable by her use of coloured lines. Not straighforward, clean lines, but rather whimsical, unpredictable stripes in various levels of transparency. Sometimes in candy-like colours, sometimes in gamma colours or grayish shades of blue. She usually calls her paintings “Broken Line”, sometimes with a reference to a forest or a metropolis or to the colour types that she used (such as the RGB colour system).
Ruri Matsumoto, Broken line dark green, 2019, Livingstone gallery
The artist uses painter's tape for her unpredictable artistic process, which she usually places on the canvas in preparation before painting. Sometimes, she reverses the process and adds painted tape to the canvas. The process of removing and reapplying tape removes some of the paint, damages it, and under the tape, it allows for some paint to mix in unexpected ways. Coincidence plays a major role in her process. The result is a particularly energetic and exciting composition.
'Broken Line Collapse Landscape', her current exhibition at Livingstone Gallery, refers to the title of one of her recent paintings, which focuses on the concept of the collapsed line, and with it: a degree of loss of control. She cuts a straight line in the cardboard after applying the acrylic paint and only after peeling off the top layer it become visible whether the line has 'collapsed' or not.
Ruri Matsumoto, Line broken black forest, 2020, Livingstone gallery
Matsumoto was born in Tokyo in 1981 and studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. In 2013, she obtained a master's degree at the renowned art academy in Düsseldorf, where Joseph Beuys taught in the 1960s and 1970s and where well-known artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer completed their studies. Matsumoto studied there under Professor Katharina Grosse, whose work featured in a major solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 2020.
Matsumoto recently received Artist of the Year Prize from ITSLIQUID. Additionally, she was invited to complete a residency at the Goyang Art Studio of the Seoul National Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea, followed by two residencies in Berlijn with Livingstone Projects. The artist also showed her paintings in Kunstmuseum Bonn and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, among others, and her work has been included in various collections including the collections of the Rijksmuseum, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and the private art collection of Pieter & Marieke Sanders.
