September 20 – October 5, 2024
The Art Incubator Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday September 20th, 7 -10 pm
Free admission
Presented for 2024 Alberta Culture Days + 2024 Design Week @ Harcourt House
The Japanese, by their geographic disposition and aesthetic temperament, have historically demonstrated an extraordinary talent for learning and adapting from outside sources without sacrificing and compromising their centuries-old system of traditions and beliefs. This is very much evidenced in Japan’s contemporary visual/new media arts, architecture and, particularly, in design. For the Japanese, design has served – through development and application of symbolic vocabulary – as a quiet and personal expression of the elegant as well as the ordinary. In addition, the Japanese have had a specific ability to reduce complicated representational ideas to simple forms and patterns that are visually tantalizing.
Art by Shin Matsunaga, Japan’s leading contemporary graphic designer, reflects these philosophical and formal principles. From the basic energies of visual form to a continuing and fresh exploration of the relationships of plane in space, of volume, elements of typography, and of visual ‘sounds’, Matsunaga has constructed a language of graphic art which is expressed through symbols rather than descriptive statements. Embracing a creed that “everything in our lives involves design”, through the years Matsunaga has cast a sharp critical eye on all ambient design, defined stereotypes, and completely recast the design environment around us. He has defined his stance toward design as “artistic invention within a 3-meter radius”. He believes that it is within ordinary daily life that universality transcending the ages lurks, and his own artistic invention comes from his real experiences and his perspicaciously critical mind. Clear typography, bright colours, and a wide range of pictorial inventions and compositions that are something between illustrations and photography determine designs of his posters. His work, some of it in the fields of corporate design, editorial and packaging design, have received numerous awards in Japan and around the globe, and have served as inspiration for several designers internationally.
Presented in partnership with the Japan Foundation in Toronto and drawn from their impressive collection of contemporary Japanese design, The Graphic Appetite: Shin Matsunaga Poster Exhibition not only showcases Matsunaga’s impressive corpus of work, but also highlights his diverse range of symbolic idioms, and discusses visual vocabulary which has been so expertly articulated through the universal themes of his poster designs. His compelling, impeccably executed, but often puzzling imagery with its wide range of formal and symbolic vocabulary and application of new techniques, entices us to contemplate his works for longer that we had planned as we attempt to unravel the symbolism that obscures the statement he wishes to make.
The specific design of his posters subverts the notion that communication consists of a passive transfer of information from one party to another. Rather, his posters seize the viewers’ attention, engaging them in a process of negotiation with the image. Through a complex association of metaphors and historical references, the viewer not only unravels but also enhances and enriches the meaning veiled by the sophisticated interplay of word and picture. Matsunaga’s poster designs refer to an abundant palette of colour enhanced by a rich visual and conceptual dictionary and testify to imaginative and sophisticated compositions of unusual terseness of measures. The irresistible suggestiveness of his poster design, its intellectual character and the way Matsunaga treats the fundamental function of a poster (information, illustration, attraction), speaks volumes about the creative potential of their author.
Jacek Malec
Exhibition Curator
Shin Matsunaga: Thoughts on Design
I think that people are often attracted to designs that are distant from their own daily lives. Silence in the midst of hustle and bustle, stiffness in the midst of softness, stillness in the midst of motion, humour in the midst of strictness, evil in the midst of honourable. All of these motivations seem to be located on the opposite side of our current lives. Even if this idea is short-sighted, I cannot deny that there have been such fluctuations and repercussions in my own design work. In the sense that I have been saying that “design is life”, there must have been some kind of rebellious psychology lying in the background. In other words, design is a way of “relieving stress” in an attempt to shake the weariness and stagnation of our daily lives.
Artist’s Biography
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Shin Matsunaga expressed an interest in visual forms in his early childhood. After graduating from the Faculty of Design at the prestigious Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1964, Matsunaga began his artistic career in the advertising department at Shiseido Co., Ltd. There, his posters for the company’s Bronze Summer suntan oil campaigns won him Tokyo Art Directors Club (ADC) prizes in three successive years (1969-1971). Subsequently, he established his own firm in Tokyo, Shin Matsunaga Design, in 1971 and, while continuing his free-lance design services for Shiseido, Matsunaga expanded his offerings to include corporate identity programs (Mazda, Hankyu), editorial design (Nonon and More magazines), books, calendars, and package designs, winning prizes in every category: Tokyo ADC prizes for calendar (1973) and editorial design (1978), top honours for package design from the Japan Package Design Association (1984, 1985, 1987), and the Mainichi Industrial Design Prize for his graphics and package designs (1986).
In 1982 Matsunaga reached nearly legendary status in Japan’s design milieu for his design of Visual Constitution of Japan, a book design with such visually appealing cover and graphics that it became a national bestseller. Since the late 1970’s, Matsunaga has exhibited his works abroad, receiving a Gold Medal for his poster designs at the United States-Japan Graphic Design Exhibition in New York City (1978, 1981), a Gold Medal at the International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, Poland (1988), and the American Clio Award for his package designs (1989).
His graphic design has become the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in Poland, USA, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Belgium, Slovenia and Canada. A major survey exhibition, Graphic Cosmos: The World of Shin Matsunaga toured Japan from 1996-1999. In 1997, the Shin Matsunaga Design World exhibition was held at Saison Museum of Art in Tokyo. In 2001, the Spring Has Come: Shin Matsunaga, Play With Details exhibition was held at the Ginza Gallery in Tokyo and the DDD Gallery in Osaka. A major survey exhibition, Shin Matsunaga: Poster Design was showcased at the Japan Foundation Gallery in Toronto in 2003, and in 2004 at the Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts in Calgary. The latter exhibition project was curated by Jacek Malec.
Top Image: Play Together with Details/Spring Has Come (detail), 2001; poster design for Matsunaga’s solo exhibition; offset print.
Photo courtesy of Shin Matsunaga
Presenting Partners:
