TOKYO.- On July 23, 2021, the opening day of the Tokyo Olympic Games, "Ripples," an outdoor sculpture, was presented by Masahide Matsuda, an artist who conceptually intervenes in the anonymity, celebrity, economy, and landscape after the time of social media, at the Japanese garden "Mihama-En" adjacent to one of the Olympic stadiums, "Makuhari Messe."

This work attempts to reverse the relationship between sound and image, referring to Matsuo Basho's haiku: "The ancient pond. A frog leaps in. The sound of the water." Basho's haiku used the sound of water as an opportunity to compose the haiku of the old pond in mind and sublimate it into art. Since the modern age, truth has been externalized by the media, but nowadays, the myth is collapsing; what do viewers think when they see a work of art floating in a pond? It is a sound artwork of silence that depicts the present age where truth is embedded in privacy by listening to the sound of the mind = meaning.

This artwork was introduced in the well-established Japanese art media, "Bijutsu-Techo". Some viewers online and offline have commented: “Looks like the Olympic Symbol is split in half”; "A half-submerged Olympics has a black sense of humor”; "The Olympics will reveal itself when the waves are calm".

The artwork will be displayed until the final day of the Olympic on August 8, which will afterward travel through Tokyo’s several galleries until September 5th, the final day of the Paralympic.

Born in 1986 in Kanagawa Prefecture. Lives and works in Berlin. Matsuda began his career as an anonymous artist, and gained attention for his events, instructions, and performances via his BOT account on Twitter, which focuses on anonymity and collective knowledge. He has won the award of distinction at "Prix Ars Electronica" in 2016.