30th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS
International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art"First Saturdays" Opening Reception - 3 October 5-9 PM - in conjunction with ART FOR ARTS' SAKE DOWNTOWN
September 11 – October 24, 2026
Biography
Yasuaki Matsuura (b. 1990, Tokushima, Japan) is a Tokyo-based artist whose sculptures and optical apparatuses examine how contemporary imaging technologies shape perception, memory, and agency. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in the design and development of cameras and imaging devices, he transforms the functional logic of recording technologies into physical encounters with delay, resistance, misalignment, and reciprocal looking.
His works often require viewers to approach, operate, wait, or physically align themselves with cameras, lenses, mirrors, and viewfinders, shifting recording from effortless capture into a bodily event.
Matsuura was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2026, with work exhibited at York Art Gallery. He has presented solo exhibitions at ISETAN SALONE TOKYO and Ars Gallery, and received the Jury Prize at Different Kyomachibori Art Fair 2025. He holds a BFA in Product Design from Kanazawa College of Art.
Artist Statement
From Recording Devices to Sculptures of Memory
My work begins with a question: what happens to memory when recording becomes effortless?
Today, images pass through smartphones, platforms, cloud storage, and AI before returning to us as a past already selected, organized, and shaped. Freed from the burden of remembering, we are also placed at a distance from our own memories.
Having spent more than a decade designing cameras and imaging devices, I now use that knowledge against seamlessness. I transform cameras, lenses, mirrors, and optical instruments into sculptural apparatuses that require viewers to approach, wait, touch, align their bodies, encounter unstable images, or become unable to record at all.
These frictions are not obstacles. They return recording to the body. Through delay, resistance, reciprocal looking, and misalignment, my works make seeing, choosing, and remembering physically perceptible again. Rather than preserving obsolete technologies, I isolate the movements, distances, and bodily negotiations once embedded in photography and reintroduce them into the present.
The works ask what remains of our agency when recordings no longer simply preserve the past, but increasingly shape how it is remembered.
Cirriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
2013 - BFA in Product Design, Kanazawa College of Art, Kanazawa, Japan
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 -Memory as Distance, ISETAN SALONE TOKYO, Tokyo, Japan
2024 -Forms of Memory, Ars Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS / ART FAIRS
2026
30th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS Exhibition, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA, USA (forthcoming)
Independent Tokyo 2026, Tokyo, Japan (forthcoming)
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition, York Art Gallery, York, UK
2025
DESIGNTIDE TOKYO, Rinnai Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan
Different Kyomachibori Art Fair 2025, COTO MONO MICHI, Osaka, Japan
AWARDS / RECOGNITION
2026
Shortlisted, Aesthetica Art Prize 2026, York Art Gallery, UK
Selected for the second round, Seizan Gallery 30th Anniversary Art Award, Tokyo, Japan
2025
Jury Prize, Different Kyomachibori Art Fair 2025, Osaka, Japan
Longlist, Artist of the Year Awards, VAA Visual Artists Association, London, UK
SELECTED DESIGN AWARDS
iF Design Award, Germany
Red Dot Design Award, Germany
IDEA Award, USA
Good Design Award, Japan
DFA Design for Asia Awards, Hong Kong