In another work that alludes to conflicts from world history, Statue of Liberty (2014), whose video component features a blurry vision of the iconic statue as seen from a boat, tells of postwar refugees moving from Europe to the United States throughout the 1940s. Nearby was a more personal example of remembrance, entitled Kamakura Beach (2014). Through a 1952 photograph, Matsubara shares an intimate memory of his first visit to the beach, while an adjacent video tries to convey the freeing feeling of letting the ocean’s waves touch one’s feet—an experience that is undoubtedly familiar to much of the audience.  

Unlike the photographs among the nine works, which all include figures, Matsubara’s videos are mostly vacant, comprising footage of landscapes, buildings or interiors. They are the artist’s attempt to reconstruct certain moments from the past. Evoking common memories, the videos, though muted, allow viewers to supplement the scenes with sounds of blowing winds, howling waves and singing birds from their own imaginations, and thereby enhance the viewing experience. Matsubara’s series was inspired by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote in his 1843 book Repetition that “repetition and recollection are the same movement, just in opposite directions.” For the artist, the videos looping infinitely is an imitation of the process of remembering something from the past.

Exhibited along the book series are four other multimedia works by Matsubara, placed in the inner exhibition area of the gallery. In Paper in the Wind (2015), a video of a levitating piece of paper is projected on the cover of a gray, vintage Japanese book. By observing the movement of the piece of paper, one might perceive the presence of wind. Another quietly poetic object is Loop – Scale Box (2015), a rectangular wooden box also with a video projected onto one of its surfaces. The video shows the never-ending action of glass vessels falling on the ground, shattering and then filling the space with glass fragments and powder. The clip then rewinds, restoring the broken pieces to their original state.

The “Repetition” series, which comprises the main works in the exhibition, features certain settings being repeated—albeit across disparate artistic media and from two different points in time that are sometimes centuries apart. What happened to those people after the photographs were taken? Have they, or their children or grandchildren, revisited the sites? And if so, what is their story? Such imagined lives and experiences enrich the juxtapositions in Matsubara’s installations and disclose a dialogue that, in his words, “[fluctuates] between the past and the future.”

Ken Matsubara’s “Repetition” is on view at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, until November 7, 2015.