Yutaka Matsuzawa

In Berlingske Tidende, Torben Weirup reviewed Yutaka Matsuzawa’s performance at Stalke Galleri as a concentrated and precise encounter with Japanese conceptual art. Weirup described the event as a quiet yet charged action in which time, language, and prophecy were activated through a simple, ritualized structure.

The performance was announced to last exactly 2 minutes and 22 seconds, and Matsuzawa appeared in meditative silence before his witnesses. Holding a piece of silk fabric bearing written signs, he let the cloth glide over his head while uttering a series of sounds that, to a Danish audience, appeared unfamiliar yet musical and sensorial. Weirup noted how the action balanced formal rigor with poetic openness.

Central to the review was Matsuzawa’s statement: “This place was under water in 200000002 before Christ. This place will be under fire in 2002.” For Weirup, this prophecy placed the performance in a field of tension between cosmic time and a specific location, lending the action both an unsettling and poetic character. The performance was read as part of Matsuzawa’s longer series of happenings, in which language functions simultaneously as material, statement, and mental marker.

Overall, the performance was described as an example of the kind of international conceptual practice that Stalke Galleri presented during this period within a Danish context, with an emphasis on ideas, time, and linguistic awareness rather than on visual expression alone.

Japanese conceptual artist Yutaka Matsuzawa in conversation during his 1989 exhibition at Stalke Galleri, Copenhagen.

Performance Chronology from Yutaka Matsuzawa 

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