YOD Gallery is delighted to present "Masashi Hattori:□ ＝△＝◯". This solo exhibition includes a video work, recorded in this March at our gallery space. In that, Hattori tries to manipulate newspaper cuts in order to make shape of a ball by stcking them together with diluted white glue. The end product is also exhibited in the gallery space.
　
Hattori had collected newspaper everyday for a year. He piled them up and took a photo. This is represented as a square, □, in the title. After that, he cuts out the newspaper into a shape of human. Then again, piled up and took a photo, which is represented as a triangle, △, in the title. Those photos were presented as a photographic image at his previous exhibition "Now ◯ I ◯ Past ◯ I" held last year. In this new exhibition, he had used this pile of newspaper cuts as the material used for the performance, which now we see it as a video work. The end result of the performance, a ball of newspaper, is shown in this exhibition and represented as a circle, ◯, in the title. For Hattori, such continuation is the essential motive for his creative activity. This is why the title is □ ＝△＝◯, and the equal sign, =, between those forms signify the common material and continuation.
　
The video work shows the action which he puts together all newspaper cuts. However, this process actually started from previous years since he was collecting them and they were presented time to time in a different medium to us. It is our saga to recognise the visible changes before actually realise what we are seeing is the same thing in a different form. Here, we can see Hattori's trick and his idea that important matter is not the form, but the content, like your own experience with his artwork.
　
"=", equal sign, which are drawn on the outside wall of the gallery represents what is symbolic meaning for this exhibition. For instance, however the form of artwork changes there is an unchangeable fact like they are consists of newspapers collected by him. Such a simple matter, but we tend to forget and over analyse what we see nowadays. Hattori intends to put importance on simple matter like this and the equal sign represents this idea of connecting each different works and he hopes that people become aware of existence of common experience through his work, which they may not realise otherwise.