Matsumoto Hideo, sculpture, ceramic, Japan circa 1993

Placed like a silent beacon in space, this ceramic form by Matsumoto Hideo condenses the principles of the Sōdeisha movement to which he is heir, while affirming a very personal vision of the world. It belongs to the Kakomi totte shō deru series, begun in the early 1990s, which the artist translates as "surround yourself and win a prize," a reflection that is both poetic and critical on the mechanisms of selection, perception, and isolation in the information age.

Made up of glazed stoneware panels assembled into a compact relief from which two protrusions protrude, this work seems to hesitate between sculpture and biomorphic mental landscape. The taut lines, the treatment of flat or curved walls, evoke an intimate cartography, an attempt to contain external chaos by establishing symbolic boundaries. This type of sculpture combines with others to create large-scale installations. For Matsumoto, tracing these boundaries means filtering infinity and creating zones of silence and astonishment, sensory and intellectual refuges. This gesture is part of the Japanese tradition of walled gardens, but the artist introduces a contemporary tension, nourished by his acute awareness of the excesses of the connected society.

Born in 1951 and trained in Kyoto with Kazuo Yagi and Suzuki Osamu, founders of Sōdeisha, Matsumoto Hideo very early on integrated the break with functionality as a creative postulate. But it was in Kecskemét, Hungary, and then in Stuttgart, where he studied in 1984/85, that he radicalized his position: ceramics is no longer a container medium, but a field of sculptural experimentation, a vector of conceptual images. This piece is one of its silent manifestos.

A professor at Kyoto Seika University since 2001, Matsumoto has passed this thought on to a generation. His work has received several awards and is included in the collections of several museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Museum of Art in Osaka. This work, from a 1993 exhibition, retains its intensity, rigor, and mystery.

H17cm 26x20cm approximately