From 12 November 2025 to 11 January 2026, the Mattatoio di Roma presents Le forme dell’umanità, a major solo exhibition dedicated to Japanese sculptor Keisuke Matsuoka. Promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, and produced by Palaexpo in collaboration with Latitudo, the exhibition originates from an idea by Ivana Della Portella, Vice President of Palaexpo with responsibility for the Mattatoio, and is curated by Tomoko Asada.
At the heart of the exhibition lies Matsuoka’s long-standing exploration of a possible representation of the “universal human being.” Rooted in a conceptual and spiritually oriented East Asian sensibility, his artistic practice unfolds as a layered inquiry into the obscure, fragile and ephemeral aspects of both individual and collective identity. Through processes of modelling, deconstruction, reassembly and transformation, the artist seeks the invisible threads that connect all human beings beyond gender, ethnicity, geography or cultural definitions.
The exhibition opens with two ebony sculptures: Rifugiato gravità, a fragmented face partially dispersed across the wall, and Per la distruzione che un giorno verrà, a visage split into two halves. At the centre of Pavilion 9A stands the large magnetic sculpture A tree man: a wooden core wrapped in a metal mesh that holds thousands of tiny magnets designed to capture iron and titanium dust, giving the figure a shifting, almost living surface. The final room hosts a series of works in glass fusion heads and faces suspended in a state between solidity and liquidity, suggesting continuous transformation. The exhibition closes with a section devoted to sketches, maquettes, diaries, matrices and test prints, allowing visitors to enter the intimate space of the artist’s studio and trace the evolution of his creative process.
Material choice plays a crucial symbolic role in Matsuoka’s work. Glass, wax, white and black clays seem to merge and dissolve before reappearing; iron and titanium dust disaggregate into millions of particles before being recomposed by magnetic force. Even when working with pure wood, the artist obsessively pursues a balance between fragmentation and reconstruction, as though creation and destruction were inseparable acts—an eternal cycle mirroring the rhythms of life. In the Refugees series, conceived during his residency in Italy, the archetype of humanity naturally converges with the figure of the refugee: anthropomorphic forms, precariously balanced and structurally unsettled, become metaphors for the vulnerabilities encountered along both external and inner journeys.
In the artist’s own words:
“The world around us can suddenly change; it can shatter like the Tower of Babel. A beloved hometown can become a land of fear. Thought freezes—we want only to protect ourselves and our families. Living like this is not easy; the desire to flee is overwhelming. I realized that anyone has the potential to become a refugee when a part of their identity is swept away.”
For Matsuoka, personal identity is a memory in perpetual transformation, dissolving and regenerating in harmony with one of the fundamental principles of Japanese culture. At the same time, he perceives the presence of a universal human essence that remains unchanged. Within this framework, sculpture becomes an elemental language in which natural and human forces merge into a primordial synthesis. Yet Matsuoka continuously bends the conventions of sculpture, seeking new expressive horizons. His works confront viewers with a simple and disarming question: what does it mean to be human?
The project is supported by the Pola Art Foundation and the Yoshini Gypsum Art Foundation, in collaboration with Galleria Faber.
Le forme dell’umanità
Artist: Keisuke Matsuoka
Curated by: Tomoko Asada
Venue: Mattatoio di Roma, Pavilion 9A, Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4 – Rome
Dates: 12 November 2025 – 11 January 2026
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11:00–20:00. Closed on Mondays.
Last admission one hour before closing.
Info: www.mattatoioroma.it
Free admission
