Tomona Matsukawa

LSS NYC

“Quietly Here”

2025 September 3 to October 12

Long Story Short is pleased to present Quietly Here, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Tomona Matsukawa, on view at 54 Henry from September 3 through October 12, 2025. Known for her meticulously rendered canvases rooted in fragments of conversation, Matsukawa transforms ordinary objects into vessels of human feeling. In this series, phrases drawn from interviews become the titles of works that hover between intimacy and distance. A cracked egg, a paper bag on a patterned tablecloth, the residue of soap sliding down a dispenser: each scene captures the stillness of the everyday while opening onto the emotional undercurrents of solitude, resilience, and acceptance.

Matsukawa’s practice begins with listening. Each canvas is anchored in fragments of conversation, where an offhand phrase becomes both title and emotional undercurrent. Earlier works often reflected the voices of women of her generation, offering nuanced reflections on how identity is shaped by gender and circumstance. More recently, she has widened her scope to include a broader range of voices—marking a shift from asking how to live as a woman to how to live as a human being. This transition brings a new universality to her practice while preserving the sensitivity and intimacy that define it.

The works in Quietly Here pulse with contrasts: cool washes of blue and gray are interrupted by the saturated glow of yolk-orange or the deep crimson of a tomato; glass surfaces refract and distort their surroundings, while folded fabrics hold shadows in soft relief. Textures emerge with almost tactile intensity—the bruised skin of a banana, the slick shine of soap, the etched pattern of a glass bowl—yet the paintings retain a hushed atmosphere, cinematic in tone but intimate in scale. This balance between precision and restraint allows quiet moments of human vulnerability to surface, asking what it means not simply to endure but to accept.

Matsukawa’s paintings resonate in part because of their duality: while their subjects are rooted in the most ordinary of things, they carry with them an undeniable gravity. Everyday objects become stand-ins for unspoken states of mind, fragments of conversation become echoes of larger truths. In this way, her work balances the personal and the collective, offering viewers a mirror in which private experience finds broader resonance.

Tomona Matsukawa (b. 1987, Aichi, Japan) has presented solo exhibitions internationally, including Solitude at KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo (2025) and As I am at Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris (2024). She has participated in significant institutional presentations such as Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and her paintings are represented in public collections including the Mori Art Museum, The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Ohara Museum of Art, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, and the Japigozzi Collection. Her work continues to draw attention for its capacity to honor fragility while elevating it into something enduring.
Reflecting on her evolving practice, Matsukawa notes: “The theme of my work has gradually moved from how to live as a woman to how to live as a human being. What draws me in during interviews is precisely that human fragility. I want to capture, through painting, the quiet resilience of those who, while accepting vulnerability, still choose to keep going.”