ARTTYCO TALKS
Keisuke invites us to witness the invisible—where wind, gravity, and vibration become collaborators in drawing, and each line is a trace of unseen natural force.
ARTTYCO TALKS | AUGUST 08 2025
EPISODE #6: KEISUKE MATSUURA
1. Your work hovers between precision and chance: you carefully arrange lines, colors, and shapes, yet allow natural forces to transform them. How do you balance control and unpredictability in your process?
K: In my work, precision and chance are not opposing forces—they coexist. I construct compositions using geometric elements such as lines, grids, and circles, while intentionally leaving space for the intervention of invisible forces like gravity, magnetism, and air. This is not about relinquishing control, but about engaging in a dialogue with phenomena that exceed human calculation. The result is a space where intention and unpredictability resonate with one another.
Interestingly, in nature, we rarely find perfect squares. I often incorporate squares into my work as a sign of human presence—proof of our desire to organize, define, and contain. In this way, the square becomes a symbol of the human mind. Yet, we ourselves are part of nature. This paradox—the simultaneous separation from and belonging to nature—is something I try to evoke. My work invites these tensions to emerge through both structure and chance, silence and resonance.
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2. Many of your installations exist both as gallery-bound paintings and large-scale outdoor works. How do you envision your pieces differently depending on their context—is there something lost or gained when they move outside the gallery?
K: The shift in context transforms the work fundamentally. In the gallery, the space is still, stable—controlled. Outdoors, the work is exposed to wind, light shifts, temperature, and time. Something is always happening. Rather than seeing it as a loss or gain, I experience it as a change in rhythm. Outdoors, the work breathes more. It becomes porous, reactive. And viewers often become more physically involved—they move, listen, and wait.
3. You often speak about visualizing invisible forces. Do you consider your works as translations, interpretations, or invitations to sense something we usually can’t see?
K: Perhaps all three. At times, I see my work as a visual translation of forces—such as magnetism—into form. At other times, it feels like an abstract interpretation of rhythm and energy. But ultimately, I hope the work serves as an invitation: to see, to sense, and to engage with what lies just beyond our perception. What we call “invisible” does not mean it doesn’t exist—it simply means it has not yet been grasped.
My work offers a space in which these subtle presences can be encountered—not as fixed truths, but as shifting potentials waiting to be perceived. Within that subtlety, I seek something unwavering—something quietly powerful. It’s often in the faintest vibrations that I find the strongest resonance.
4. Light, movement, and gravity appear not just as metaphors, but as collaborators. Do you see nature as a co-author in your creative process?
K: Absolutely. Nature is not a theme in my work—it’s a collaborator, a participant. When I use magnets or create installations that respond to wind or light, I am setting up a structure, but nature completes it. The marks that gravity leaves, the movements of air, the shifting of shadows—they are beyond my control, yet essential. This co-authorship is not always visible, but always present.
5. There’s a quiet rhythm to your pieces, almost musical. Do sound influence the way you compose visually?
K: Yes, sound has long been part of my thinking, even if not always directly present. I think of my compositions in terms of rhythm, tension, and silence. Just as sound can oscillate between harmony and disruption, so too can form. Some of my outdoor works have even generated sound naturally—vibrating materials responding to wind. I often think of these vibrations as a silent music that shapes space.
