joseph scissorhands: Yoko Matsumoto

Sunday 3 March 2024

Yoko Matsumoto

Yoko Matsumoto - Rock Flower, 1993 (detail).

"My ideal was to express a space with transparency like an original ink painting, fuzzy and indistinct things. An ideal space." - Yoko Matsumoto.

I saw the work of 88 year old artist Yoko Matsumoto at White Cube Mason's Yard for the first time this week and instantly fell in love with it. Surprisingly, given her age, this is the first solo show of Matsumoto's work in the UK. These are large airy, ethereal abstracts executed with a delicate, lightness of touch. The paintings (some using a chiaroscuro technique contrasting areas of light and dark), are full of movement resembling swirling plumes of pink smoke or turbulent clouds, and executed with light, fluid, feathery brushwork and then wiped with a cloth for extra surface texture. Matsumoto works intuitively without any preparatory drawings and despite her advanced years still enjoys the physicality of the process in creating her work 'I paint with the work lying on the floor, my sweat is constantly dripping on it. It's manual labour, pure and simple, with no time to question. The work doesn't allow me to think, and with no time to think I become one with the painting.' The green and blue canvases in the lower gallery are executed with a heavier touch. Paint is applied more densely to suggest impressions of foliage or deep pools of water. Naturally these 'green' paintings evoke comparisons to landscape artists from art history especially Monet and his fantastic paintings of waterlilies and garden at Giverny. Comparisons could also be made with female American abstract artist Joan Mitchell especially in light of the exhibition Monet Mitchell which took place at the Fondation Louis Vuitton last year which I visited and posted about on this blog (here). Although initially influenced by the work of Abstract Expressionism and in particular Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis on a visit to New York in 1967, Matsumoto has developed a signature and technique unique to herself. Complementing the paintings are a series of smaller scale charcoal and pastel drawings which conclude the exhibition. As mentioned earlier these are not preparatory studies for the paintings but are exercises, drawings done for the sake drawing, valuable extensions of her practice. It was wonderful to discover and be inspired these paintings. Interestingly I can't remember Matsumoto being included in the huge survey of women abstract artists held at the Whitechapel last year (here). Hopefully this initial solo showing of her work will lead to greater exposure as these paintings deserve to be seen and appreciated by a much bigger audience.