Takesada Matsutani: Shifting Boundaries
Hauser & Wirth, London, UK
5 February – 18 April 2026
If you are in London before 18 April, this exhibition is worth your time. At Hauser & Wirth London, Takesada Matsutani presents over six decades of work built around a single tension: how much control an artist can hold over a material, and when it needs to be released.
Born in Osaka in 1937, Matsutani began painting after a childhood illness forced him to leave school. That origin is not incidental. It shapes the entire practice. His move from realism to abstraction was not stylistic, but necessary, a way to give form to an internal pressure.
“I outwardly expressed my inner conflict and attempted to brush aside this heavy burden.” – Takesada Matsutani
This impulse finds its most radical articulation in his involvement with the Gutai Art Association. Rejecting the flatness of painting, Matsutani began working with vinyl glue in the early 1960s, manipulating it with fans and his own breath to produce swelling, biomorphic forms. These surfaces feel less constructed than forced into existence.
The work sits between intention and release. Part of it is controlled, part of it unfolds on its own. That balance is what keeps it active.
After moving to Paris in 1966, Matsutani did not expand his language but reduced it. Graphite and paper became central. His Streams installations extend drawing into space and time, often completed through physical actions by the artist. The work is never fully fixed. It remains in process.
That condition is not only visible, it is felt. In front of the works, my own body reacted almost without thinking, following the rhythm of the lines and forms. Not imitation, but a physical response to the energy they hold.
This is where the exhibition holds. Not in its historical framing, but in its ability to activate something in the viewer. Matsutani does not shift direction constantly. He returns to the same problem and refines it over time.
If you are interested in the expressive potential of black and white, or in practices where material, gesture and time are inseparable, this exhibition is unusually clear in what it sets out to do.
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