Radicalism in the Wilderness - Psi Room

Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s
March 9—June 9, 2019
Hailing from Shimo Suwa in mountainous central Japan, Matsuzawa was one of Japan’s pioneer conceptual artists. He made a complete break from materiality in his art through his drastic proposal of “vanishing of matter,” best exemplified in his landmark exhibition Independent ’64 in the Wilderness (1964). The exhibition completely eliminated the physical presence of artworks, instead showcasing “formless emissions” by himself and other artists. Informed by his interests in contemporary science, parapsychology, and non-Zen Buddhism, Matsuzawa established his immaterial art using “kannen,” a Buddhist-derived practice of “meditative visualization” to unleash the viewer’s mental faculty to see the mind’s eye. Using the principle of vanishing of matter and the method of kannen, he formulated Non-Sensory Painting, an attempt to make the invisible visible through a theoretical construct akin to astrophysics and quantum mechanics.
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