Year: 2017
Medium: oil, oil pastel, charcoal on canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 250 cm (78 3/4 x 98 3/8 in.)
Acquired from Hino Gallery, 2022
This work is unquestionably the largest and finest within Yoko Matsumoto’s “Green” series, which has been ongoing since 2005. Thinly painted white lines emerge in the light on a large surface. The title includes the word “vibrates,” and indeed, the white lines waver horizontally while the surface’s overall movement evokes a sense of verticality. Although people may have different impressions of the color green depending on their nationality and region, what else can one feel but a sense of the sublime when viewing the boundless painting filled with green? Matsumoto explains that green is a color of “long-held desires”. The title, “Landscape-Like Surface Vibrates,” has occasionally been used for her other works in the past. The artist’s entire spirit vibrates to abstract the “landscape,” which one cannot view or touch, and represent it on the canvas. The work was lent out from this collection for the exhibition “Passport to Shangri-La” at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, where pairs of works by contemporary artists were juxtaposed with the collection pieces. In the exhibition, this work was exhibited alongside a work by Japanese painter Shunso Hishida, who passed away at a young age but was praised throughout his life by Taikan Yokoyama for his unparalleled talent.
