News
- "The Big Flat Now 4.0" Dubai Festival City, September 5 - 30, 2023
- "It knows: When Forms Become Mind" 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, April 8 - November 5, 2023
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About
"The Laughing Man" by conceptual artist Shōei Matsuda, in the age of social media, is an art project presented in various places including art galleries, museums, commercial spaces, hotels, and street vending machines. While actively incorporating rapidly advancing technologies like digital art, spatial computing, and AR filters, the project's approach remains open to a wide audience.
Emojis, invented in the 1990s in Japan, provided an opportunity for global connection through a shared visual language. From this context, Matsuda takes the "Face with Tears of Joy," the most used emoji of the past decade, as a motif to represent the collective consciousness of people in the post-social media era. This seemingly flat expression, woven with multiple emotions, elicits diverse interpretations from senders and receivers. Due to its complexity and versatility, Matsuda positions it as a symbol of modern spirit.
The images used in this project will be distributed in both Twemoji versions, permitted under the Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International), and original versions created through collaboration.
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Archive
Under construction.
Ch.12 "Colorful" Digital, ?? 2023
Ch.11 "Lunatic Pandora 2.0" ??, ?? 2023
Ch.10 "The Big Flat Now 4.0" Dubai, September 2023
Ch.9 "The Big Flat Now 3.0" Ishikawa, April 2023
Ch.8 "Metal/Gradient" Digital, July 2022
Ch.7 "The Laughing Man Store" Tokyo, December 2022
Ch.6 "The Big Flat Now 2.0" Shizuoka, November 2022
Ch.5 "The Big Flat Now 1.0" Tokyo, September 2022
Ch.4 "Crystal/Monochrome" Digital, July 2022
Ch.3 "Magic Number" Tokyo, June 2022
Ch.2 "Lunatic Pandora 1.0" Tokyo, April 2022
Ch.1 "The Laughing Man" Tokyo, March 2022
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Membership Rewards
Owners of related items can obtain digital art after meeting specific conditions. Please note that it may take up to 30 days for delivery.
A. Members Card
Please fill out the form. You can obtain the digital art (monochrome version).
B. Box
Please fill out the form. You can obtain the digital art (rotate version).
C. Keychain
Use the AR filter to take a photo and post it on Stories with @shoeimatsuda. Then fill out the form. You can obtain the digital art (standard version).
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Artist
Shōei Matsuda 松田将英
Born in 1986. Started activities on social media in 2010, garnering significant attention through collaborative events, instructions, and performances with net personalities centered around anonymity and collective knowledge. These activities reexamine subjectivity and authorship post-social media, earning high praise as a practice that generates new collectivity through direct interventions in cities and societies. Moved to Germany in 2016, participating in Berliner Gazette's international conference for four years, gathering artists, researchers, journalists, and political activists from around the world. Upon returning to Japan in 2020, began activities under real name, engaging in conceptual and poetic practices across various media including installations, sculptures, prints, and videos, addressing celebrity, economy, and landscapes in the network-disseminated era. Received an Award of Distinction at the international media art festival "Ars Electronica Award" in 2016.
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Contact