Shavings
We have known the Japanese artist Takesada Matsutani for many years now, and I have a growing respect for his work, but even more especially for the resoluteness of his life. From the making of the work itself, he never throws anything away, but collects all the detritus accumulated over the years, like the ten years of pencil shavings or sharpenings in the bucket above. Elsewhere on shelves, or left around the studio and on his desk you will find all the staples he has ever taken out of canvases, the ends of crayons that are now too short to hold. This morning he showed me his first abstract painting from the early nineteen sixties, when he moved out of figuration towards organic forms developed from the materials of the painting and the action of its making.What I now really admire is the process of his days in the studio, which is also an office, library and kitchen and archive, from where he writes and sends beautifully handwritten letters every day, and records the addressees in meticulously structured lists – it seems such a remarkably literary and domestic activity for so abstract an artist. SC
notes from an urban hibernation 