Take Five With Tomohiro Okazaki’s Matchstick Animations
The perfect way to fill your your boredom.
Tomohiro Okazaki is a Tokyo-based designer with a penchant for animation and understanding structure. The head of SWIMMING design studio, Okazaki has recently created a series of animations that takes the matchstick as a subject made into infinite configurations.
The Japanese designer uses household objects, such as strips of paper and paint, to create mesmerizing stop motion animations that will surely fill all your downtime. Each study is childlike in its initial observation, however, observing Okazaki’s manipulation of form reveals his extensive research that has influenced his client work for the likes of Panasonic’s AkeruE Museum, Muji’s “Compact Life” series, and the art direction for Issey Miyake’s Spring/Summer 2021 show.
Speaking on his practice, Okazaki states on his website that design “provides an opportunity to face worlds and events that I have never known before, acts that connect with people and society, and the possibility of discovering and assembling new ways of understanding and structure of the world.”
So if you have the time (or not), get lost in Okazaki’s matchstick animations, along with a host of other striking visuals found via his Instagram or YouTube channels.
Elsewhere in art, Urs Fischer’s latest exhibition is literally melting away in Paris’ Bourse de Commerce.
