Matthew Pillsbury: "Tokyo"

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"Tokyu Plaza"

Matthew Pillsbury, "Tokyu Plaza," 2014, archival pigment ink print, 30" x 40".

Following his Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014, the Douglas Udell Gallery debuts Matthew Pillsbury’s latest series Tokyo for the first time in Canada.

Project Statement (Excerpt):

Technology use, as it has in much of the world, has increased exponentially in Tokyo, latching itself onto everything from modern-day cell phone-obsessed geisha women to the ultra-hip neighborhood of Shinjuku, where themed clubs and bars now include high-tech robotics as a featured part of the entertainment. Expecting to encounter the kinetic energy depicted in the William Klein and Andreas Gursky photographs of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, I arrived to discover that the once buzzing trading floor is now run in almost unnerving stillness by computers. While the temples are still revered and deeply respected places of worship, pop culture and rebellion amongst Western-obsessed Japanese youth have crept irreversibly in, forcing sacred and traditional sites to share cultural importance with modern Manga robots and Disney castles.