Masanori Matsuda

松田壯統

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Everything had changed since January 17, 1995 when I woke up - as an earthquake survivor - in the Kobe Earthquake. My family house was collapsed and I was 12 years old at the time. Surviving in a major earthquake is a life evoking experience. From then onwards, I am much aware of a parallel world where is not lying ahead of what I perceive as the actual reality but, perhaps, a reality that is filled with emptiness to be registered on the other ends of this phenomenological world. 'Life cycles' has thus been a fundamental premise for tracing the narratives in my work. I am drawn to exploring the spatial stories that could be traced through former human activities. Hence, getting to know and understand the history of a place is crucial in my art practice. The orientation of my work has always been about tuning ‘the focus of a place’. Through creating ephemeral, site-responsive work, not only I would represent a place through drawing the connections between the space and the objects found within the very space, I would transform the stories that are embedded in different sites into temporal sets in order for viewers to engage.