Preview
THE GRAPHIC APPETITE
Shin Matsunaga
Runs until August 28
Triangle Gallery
From the land of the rising sun comes one of the world’s leading graphic designers.
The Graphic Appetite: Shin Matsunaga Poster Exhibition is now open at the Triangle Gallery.
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Matsunaga grew up during a time in Japan’s history that was shaped by war, scorched by nuclear weapons and deeply nationalistic.
Wed to its ancient arts, including kabuki and calligraphy, Japan was first decimated by its enemies and eventually rebuilt by them. It remains a country of bitter irony and this perhaps helps explain Matsunaga and the milieu that he embraces. It has led him to the lucrative world of commercial design work while continuing to create pieces that bear the unmistakable influences of his forefathers.
Matsunaga has come to be regarded as one of the most important graphic designers of his time. He is collected by important art galleries across the globe – including the Museum of Modern Art in New York – while still competing for assignments from companies that include the French cigarette manufacturer Gitanes and the Japanese car maker Mazda. Matsunaga occupies a rare position as a creator who finds comfort with big business while still being respected for a body of work that stands on its own artistic merits. He is informed by his heritage, yet courted by the world’s largest business conglomerates who view the world in terms of future markets.
Part corporate advertisement, part plea for peace, The Graphic Appetite features more than 40 posters that span 1989 to 2003 and showcase a diverse and rich talent.
Appropriately, Matsunaga’s style can also inhabit two very different worlds. Posters such as his Composition of Drawing series – which include Airship, Lady’s Face and Gentleman with Moustache – which he completed for a one-man exhibition in 2003, demonstrate his skill at creating strong, hand-drawn images that demand the viewer’s attention.
On the other end of the spectrum is his Nima Sand Museum poster created in 1991 for the Museum of Sand and Sand Glass in Japan. The striking blue diamond shape that dominates the poster is inspired by the cluster of six pyramid-like buildings that comprise the museum complex. From this source of inspiration Matsunaga has created something fresh on his computer, with an elegant execution of intelligence and vision.
Matsunaga also shows off his fondness for joining together free-form and computer-assisted design in several of his pieces. An example is the poster Peace: Love, Peace and Happiness from 1986. Created for the Poster for Peace campaign, which Matsunaga has regularly contributed to, this work shows an androgynous black figure with a multi-coloured geometric clump beginning to grow inside of the individual’s head – a germination of peace represented by the only futuristic element in the poster.
Although text and typography also play an important role in these posters, it is the bold and elemental graphics of Matsunaga that make the strongest impression.
Calgary is Graphic Appetite’s only stop in Western Canada and it offers a good opportunity to become acquainted with an artist-designer who remains a relatively unknown figure to most North Americans. |
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