Ryota Matsumoto – Variable Phase Opacities

Artist Statement

Matsumoto’s artwork reflects the morphological transformations of our ever-evolving ecological milieus that are attributed to a multitude of spatio-temporal phenomena influenced by socioeconomic and built environments. They are created as visual commentaries on speculative changes in notions of societies, cultures and ecosystems in the transient nature of shifting topography and geology.
The artwork explores the hybrid technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, graphite, and photo collage) and digital media, manifesting the collective recognition of a multiplicity of epistemological viewpoints in all cognitive dimensions of spatiality.
The varying scale, juxtaposition of biomorphic forms, intertwined textures, oblique projections and visual metamorphoses are employed as the multi-layered drawing methodologies to question and investigate the ubiquitous nature of urban meta-morphology, the eco-political reality of the Anthropocene epoch, the advancement of biomaterial technologies and their visual representation in the context of non-Euclidean configuration. Furthermore, the application of these techniques allow the work to transcend the boundaries between analog and digital media as well as between two- and multi-dimensional domains.
His compositional techniques imbue the work with what we see as the very essence of our socio-cultural environments beyond the conventional protocols of architectural and artistic formalities, and that they conjure up the synthetic possibilities within which the spatial and temporal variations of existing spatial semiotics emerge as the potential products of alchemical procedures.

Biography

Ryota Matsumoto is a principal and founder of an award-winning interdisciplinary design office, Ryota Matsumoto Studio. He is an artist, designer and urban planner. Born in Tokyo, he was raised in Hong Kong and Japan. He received a Master of Architecture degree from University of Pennsylvania in 2007 after his studies at Architectural Association in London and Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art in early 90’s. Matsumoto has previously collaborated with a cofounder of the Metabolist Movement, Kisho Kurokawa, and with Arata Isozaki, Cesar Pelli, MIT Media Lab and Nihon Sekkei Inc. before establishing his office.
He presented his work for the 5th symposium of the Imaginaries of the Future at Cornell University in 2017 and currently serves as an adjunct lecturer of Transart institute, University of Plymouth.
His current interest gravitates around the embodiment of cultural possibilities in art, ecology, and urban topography.

http://www.ryotamatsumoto.com
https://www.facebook.com/ryota.matsumoto.718