Takesada Matsutani, Shifting Boundaries at Hauser and Wirth, London, Feb 2026 – There really isn’t a massive need to write about exhibitions that happen at big establishment places like Hauser and Wirth on these pages is there? We go to them often enough, most of the time they’re rather rewarding, the reality is the mainstream art press have shows at spaces like this pretty much covered don’t they? This Takesada Matsutani show is particularly rewarding though, I’ve already been back to it a couple of times, there’s just something vert satisfying about it, about walking around it, through it, about the space the work occupies, about the way the work occupies the space, about the material, the graphite and the deep purple…    

The Ōsaka-born artist Takesada Matsutani has taken over one of the two almost adjacent Savile Row Hauser and Wirth Gallery spaces for his first exhibition in London for over a decade, a show coinciding with his 60th year of living and working in Paris and something to do with his concern with the reshaping of matter, namely his signature materials of vinyl glue and graphite. The material used isn’t immediately obvious, you are, unless you know already, looking at the shapes, the textures, the way the fabric or the paper is wrapped around the walls, although once you do figure it out and start to focus on what has been used to make the marks, the shapes, the textures, it does rather add to the conversations in the two white rooms of the big space.  The conversations the pieces have with each other, with the viewer, the unspoken conversations between viewers slowly walking around, there maybe only three or four of us in here on a cold grey Friday afternoon in Mid February but there are nods and knowing silence as we stand there in the quiet of the room taking in the way the pieces wrap around the walls and especially the concrete support in the middle of the room, without being forceful, there’s something very powerful about the work in here, about being in here with the work.   

“This exhibition, organised with Olivier Renaud-Clement, ranges from the sensational sculpture ‘The Magic Box’ (1988) to brand-new works that epitomise his experimentation with glue. The 60th anniversary of Matsutani’s time in Paris is concurrent with the 10th Prix Matsutani, an initiative from the SHŌEN endowment fund founded by Takesada Matsutani and his wife Kate Van Houten with the goal of supporting artists and their work. Additionally, Musée Cernuschi will commission a project with the artist in September 2026…” 

“A key member of the Japanese avant-garde collective the Gutai Art Association (1954 – 1972) in the 1960s, Matsutani moved to Paris in 1966 after receiving a grant from the French government as a result of winning first prize in the 1st Mainichi Art Competition. As part of the Gutai group, the artist experimented with vinyl glue by manipulating the substance to create bulbous and sensuous forms reminiscent of human curves and features. By applying glue to canvas, letting it partially dry to form a skin and then inflating it with his own breath using a straw or hairdryers and fans, Matsutani brings the material to life. Continuing this form of art making in the present day, he incorporates acrylic paint in the new body of work on view to turn the glue a deep purple – a colour he began exploring in the last five years. Transforming the viscous material into solid, three-dimensional forms, the artist attempts to stop time and capture a suspended moment”. 

It does feel both traditional (in a contemporary sense) and at the same time extremely unconventional. It feels questioning; everyday materials used in a far from everyday way, bits of rope creating tension, bringing out the dimension, a sense of the meditative. it does feel methodical rather than instant or improvised, extremely considered, very much so. Actually it feels very calming in here, it feels rather special to get to spend time in the space of the gallery.  

“Exemplifying the Gutai spirit to ‘do what no one has done before’, Matsutani has reimagined graphite and vinyl glue as artistic tools, pushing the boundaries of their uses to the limits. One of the last surviving members of the Gutai group, he turned 89 on 1 January 2026, yet he still maintains a daily studio practice, evident in the relentless energy that continues from his historic works to the new canvases on view”.  

I imagine I shall go back a number of times while the opportunity is there, and it is right there, just walk in, entry is free and these things can never be taken for granted, these big galleries that you can just walk in to, it really is a privilege to get to see this show and indeed the show running alongside Matsutani’s exhibition. Running alongside Takesada Matsutani’s exhibition is a deeply intriguing show of work by Tetsumi Kudo. Kudo’s exhibition is happening at Hauser and Wirth’s South Gallery just a few doors up on Saville Row.  Kudo was a key player of Tokyo’s anti-art movement as well as the nouveau realisme movement in France. Though the two artists were part of different movements, they are united by their relocation from Japan to Paris, France, in the 1960s, where they became acquainted with each other, and by their rejection of established modes of making. 

The very busy Tetsumi Kudo show bares very little in terms of relation to the peace and quiet, the pace and the space of the Takesada Matsutani exhibition besides the obvious aforementioned fact that they are both Japanese and both work (or worked) in Paris and the fact that they are both intriguing rewarding as well a provoking exhibitions. The Kudo show is alive with sound, with colour, with bird cages, with intense visual stimulation, with mystic, with the what and the why of it all, with the questions and yes, you could say the two shows are united in the fact that they really are rather like nothing else, that already mentioned Gutai spirit and thatr need to do what no one has done before…  

“In a wide-ranging practice spanning four decades, post-war Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935 – 1990) explored the implications of what would later be termed the Anthropocene in prescient work that interrogated the proliferation of mass consumption, the rise of technology and environmental degradation” 

And here in this room full of on these regimented plinths and the noise of the films running in the space alongside the noise of the pinks and the greens of those busy bird cages and before we get to what might be in them or inside that dice over there and what is going on in that film and…

Two shows well worth seeing as I’m sure the establishment art press have told you already.  (sw)

Both the Hauser and Wirth London spaces are located almost next door to each other on Savile Row, in the heart of London’s Mayfair at 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET. The Takesada Matsutani show is on until 18th April 2026 as is the Tetsumi Kudo exhibition

As always, do please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show

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