We are pleased to announce the exhibition “Spring Steps” by Ken MATSUBARA. He has handled videos and photos as his main media since the 1980s. His works multidirectionally expands with various objects and installations, and attracts attention at home and abroad. This is his first exhibition at LOKO GALLERY.

The theme he has consistently held in recent production is “memory”. For instance, in the works, old found photos / objects make us feel profound historical background proper to itself or signs of nostalgia; on the other hand, by being given anonymity in simple and fresh structure of works, the things are resonant with viewer’s memory, and is focused to make also wholly new images. We can find not only straight critical mind or nostalgia, but also some kind of positive jumps which can dwell only in visual art. He talks about such dynamics that arise from repetition, circulation and resonance of memory; by citing the words “repetition and reminiscing are same movement” “The reminisced things are things which existed in the past. That is iterated backward, but true repetition is reminisced forward” by Søren Kierkegaard.

In this Exhibition, Matsubara shows video and installation works that used “Dance” as a subject for the first time in his carrer. Dance hall and social dance are cultural symbols in restoration age of postwar Japan; they are symbols of European and American sophistication that young people longed for then; simultaneously, they and Asian modernization or colonial rule are opposite sides of the same coin. Regarding such complex contexts, in his works, Matsubara summons and reminisces about dymanic calor which dance culture had once in this country; and he aims to create new magnetic field toward the future.