2014 Catalogue Archive

In 1965, Japanese artist Yutaka Matsuda began creating what he called mūbu āto (moving art), and within a year he started to incorporate motors that could produce repetitive, automatic movements within the work. This piece from 1971 contains two cutout peephole shapes (characteristic of his work from this period) with black dots moving inside. Like many second generation Gutai works made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Matsuda’s piece conjures a world where the organic and the technological are increasingly merged, and the mechanics of how things work are often hidden behind an elegant façade. In 1967, Yutaka Matsuda became one of the last members to join the Gutai group, and he exhibited with the group in 17th Gutai Art Exhibition and From Space to Environment in 1966, and the 4th International Young Artists Exhibition in 1967. His work was included in Gutai I, II, III, Ashiya City Museum of Art & History; The 50th Anniversary of Gutai Retrospective Exhibition, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe; and Gutai: The Spirit of an Era, The National Art Center, Tokyo.