Megumi Matsubara
Site-specific istallation.
Composed of half-mirror glass framed same size of a window across, applied films to clerestory, framed ink-on-paper, naked archival pigment prints.
The work was developed interacting with Fumihiko Maki’s architecture, and Yerba Buena Gardens’ redevelopment history.
*
Artist and architect Megumi Matsubara’s spatial compositions strike a delicate balance of presence and absence.
For this new project commission, she brings her creative practice into intimate, site-specific dialogue with the YBCA building, amplifying direct experience of its architecture while weaving in narratives from the surrounding neighborhood and larger fabric of the city. Inspired by the site’s close proximity to Yerba Buena Gardens, Matsubara approaches its various physical and social layers through the conceptual lens of a garden, asking, “What are the invisible elements that define a garden’s presence? The constant effort of watering, caring, acting? The climate? The soil underneath?”
She combines photography, sculpture, text, and phenomena of light to unfold new dimensions of spatial experience, inviting visitors to embrace their own sensorial and mental landscapes as part of a multifaceted ecology of place.
*Text: Carolyn F. Strauss (Curator, Slow Dialogues: Time, Space, and Scale)
SLOW DIALOGUES: Time, Space, and Scale invites holistic, reflective and critical understandings of both our immediate surroundings and our greater environment.
Presented at:
SLOW DIALOGUES: Time, Space, and Scale
guest curated by Slow Research Lab
with works by Jorge Otero-Pailos, Megumi Matsubara, Maria Blaisse
Exhibition period:
22 Apr – 31 Jul 2016
Location:
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Upstairs Galleries
San Francisco, U.S.A.
Public program:
14:00 – 15:00, Sat, 23 Apr 2016
at Alley Cat Books and Gallery
Megumi Matsubara reads from her book “The Tale of the Japanese and the Mosquito” followed by a talk about her perennial subject: red poppy. The space will be scented with the fragrance of the red poppy field that a prominent Moroccan botanist/aromatherapist produced with Matsubara’s tale as inspiration.
Capture – https://vimeo.com/166708706
More information:
About the exhibition – https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/slow-dialogues-time-space-and-scale
YBCA – https://www.ybca.org/
Alley Cat Books – http://www.alleycatbookshop.com/
Photographs:
Ana Paula Pais (Image 18 – 24)
Megumi Matsubara (Image 1 – 17 & 25)
Acknowledgments:
Carolyn F. Strauss, Ana Paula Pais, Slow Research Lab. Dorothy Davilla, Martin Strickland, Tesar Freeman, YBCA. Simon Crafts, Jordan Gower, Alley Cat Books and Gallery. Mary Strauss. Luca Pradella. Ann Miller. San Francisco Center for the Book. Voice Gallery Marrakech.