Text contributed to this exhibition by cultural researcher Hirotaka Yamamoto

This exhibition, "The Shape of Time," is a two-person exhibition by Suga Yuji and Masuda Masahiro.

Suga is an artist who has consistently explored "boundaries" through his paintings, although his techniques vary widely. For example, Suga applies a mirror-like finish to the entire canvas and then applies paint to it. He then divides the canvas in half with a straight line and scrapes away some of the paint, creating an expression that resembles the negative and positive of a photograph. In recent years, Suga has become interested in "liminal space," the boundary between reality and fiction. This space, stripped of both reality and fiction, is an intermediate area that has lost its subjectivity, and the liminal spaces Suga paints give the impression of a mysterious world detached from the flow of time.

Masuda is also an artist who, like Suga, has been interested in "boundaries," particularly the boundary between reality and fiction. Masuda photographs landscapes and other subjects, and repeatedly projects the images onto the same location using a projector. Through the repeated process of silkscreen printing, multi-layered paintings are born, with paints layered on top of each other. The space that Masuda creates in his paintings is similar to the liminal space that Suga has been interested in and has approached. It is clear, therefore, that both Suga and Masuda are interested in space. However, while the spaces Masuda depicts are filled with a heavy, material feel, the spaces Suga paints are filled with a sense of emptiness and loss. Where does this striking difference come from?

I believe this stems from the fact that while the two artists share a similar interest in "space," they take very different stances when it comes to "time." In other words, while Suga strips time from his work by scraping away the paint, Masuda accumulates time in his work by layering paint.

For this reason, while the spatial similarities in the paintings of Suga Yuji and Masuda Masahiro are naturally drawn to, we would like visitors to also pay attention to the temporal differences between the two. Through these similarities and differences, this exhibition brings to light the further significance of Suga and Masuda's artistic practice in a contrapuntal manner. The new video work, which the two created collaboratively using computer graphics, also serves to highlight these similarities and differences.

Author Information

Hiroki Yamamoto

Cultural researcher. Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1986. Associate professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Art History, Faculty of Literature, Jissen Women's University. After graduating from the Faculty of Sociology at Hitotsubashi University, she obtained her master's and doctorate degrees from the University of the Arts London. From 2013 to 2018, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Transnational Arts Research Centre, University of the Arts London. She has held positions such as researcher at the Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju, South Korea, postdoctoral fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts, and lecturer in the Department of Art Studies, Faculty of Art and Crafts, Kanazawa College of Art, before assuming her current position in 2024. His publications include "Contemporary Art History: Europe, America, Japan, and Transnational" (Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2019), "Media and Culture in Transnational Asia: Divergence and Convergence" (co-author, Rutgers University Press, 2020), "Thinking about Racism" (co-author, Republic, 2021), and "Art of This Country (Modern Japan) - De-Imperialistizing Japanese Art History" (co-edited with Odawara Nodoka, Getsuyosha, 2023). He is currently conducting research on 1) regional art festivals in Japan since the 2000s, 2) art of ethnic minorities, and 3) issues of gender and ecology in contemporary art.