Ippodo Gallery announces the opening of Chaos: Ken Matsubara's Buddhist Masterwork at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, on display from September 2, 2023 - March 10, 2024. This special highlight of Matsubara's Chaos was created in 1983 during the artist's late twenties. The works are paired with the legendary Taima Mandala from the 14th century.
Despite 600 years of distance between the two masterworks, a timeless Buddhist teaching is revealed as audiences traverse the niga byakudōzu, 'White Road between Two Rivers,' out from chaos and into the nirvanic 'Pure Land,' as shown in the mandala.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art brings to its 'Bell Family Decorative Arts Court,' a seven-month free art exhibition which features contemporary artist Ken Matsubara in the context of themes from Buddhism in Japanese paintings. The Japanese artist introduces auditory symbols that evoke the sounds of singing bowls, and motifs derived from the Buddhist tales he learned during his formative years, copying artworks at the temple complex near his hometown in Japan. Chaos (1983) is Matsubara's revelation in which he assembles a scene expressing the suffering of life and the path to enlightenment using the techniques in Western abstraction which he developed under the painter Sankō Inoue during his formal training.
Ippodo Gallery has been representing Ken Matsubara's Japanese art in the United States since 2016 and continues to advocate his contemporary art masterpieces for admirers worldwide. To celebrate his remarkable career, the art gallery presents several works in different styles at their Upper Eastside Gallery. They will feature his newest, magnificent byobu screens during Asia Week happening in New York in March 2024.
Ken Matsubara's 'Chaos' is on view from September 2, 2023 - March 10, 2024, at the Ippodo Gallery in New York, USA.
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