Venue: MEM (Osaka)
October 17^th – November 14^th, 2009
Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
Reception: October 17^th 17:00

Since the 1980’s Matsui has been known for her installation works. Since 2001 she started working on video installations where she features herself. For this exhibition we are proud to present her latest video work that utilize the moving image, which has become mainstream, and performance.

A comment by the artist:

For video work, shooting must be done under light and then the circumstances are reproduced again through light.
I think that much of the work I have continued to create is composed of what can be called record and memory whether they be installations or drawings or any other form of expression. Ultimately, I have exhibited my works as “things still in time.”
When walking around the exhibition, your line of sight moves around the plane of the drawings in the installation. Or perhaps your eyeballs are at the mercy of the picture. It may seem that the movement I am referring to is quite the opposite of “things still in time.” But following moving things with your line of sight, moving your line of sight, your line of sight when you are moving, I believe that these things do not continue forever.

“Blinking” ceaselessly continues.
The act of “blinking” is dynamic but is actually a function to make time still.

As a result of blinking, what was seen becomes “still” for a moment in your memory. That is how I have accumulated countless “still” memories.

If you asked me how I captured this “stillness,” it is when I start to move that I unexpectedly become “still.”
Before I walk, I become still.
But this “stillness” is quite incomplete. It is the moment just before I sway. I believe dream = vision, visions of my memories.
My work lives in me, as if it sleeps and wakes with me in the morning.

About HEIDI49 vision – mist
The works in this exhibition are the sibling series of the series HEIDI49 vision – river that was presented in June of this year. Originally HEIDI49 – vision was quite long with a running time of over an hour. Not a length that was well suited to exhibit at a gallery. So it was splint in two, vision – river and vision – mist.
That is why there is similar scenery in the two video works but I have altered the video, trying a new approach from a different angle.
The “image” appears and disappears as if it were in a mist. You must physically approach it if you want to capture it. This idea is central. With the moving image and drawing I am endeavoring to express the space between “reality and dreams.”
Ruins and desolate colorless places tell colorful stories. It is relatively easy for our memories to overlap in nature that is a familiar size to humans. On the other hand, in nature that surpasses humans in size it is difficult to for everyday memories of individuals to overlap.
For those who have come from cities, it is very difficult to become playful with nature.

In HEIDI49 – vision I have attempted an approach from both sides.
There is yearning for the nature inside humans and simultaneously terror at the impossibly of control. Perhaps it can be said that this is the condition of life.

In producing these video works, I have placed hidden elements of fable and allegory. If I compare the HEDI works to this condition, from the cracks of allegory, I have begun to see spectacle, scene, and vision as mixed together.
Is it possible to approach the space between scene and sight?
I endeavor to create works that are brave. Myself included.

Chie Matsui