Ruins Listening

Maxime Matias believes that many of the most valuable things in life are invisible. In 2016, he encountered the Japanese incense ceremony kōdō for the first time through a book by the French philosopher Chantal Jaquet. Since then, he has deepened his interest in and understanding of this unique Japanese ritual culture. In kōdō, the word “smell” is not used; instead, the term “listen” is employed. He explains that this is not merely about sensing a fragrance, but about engaging deeply with the memories and thoughts it evokes in that moment.
This exhibition centers around the theme of “preserving the memory of vanishing places through scent.” It focuses on five traditional machiyas in central Japan that were demolished in the summer of 2024. The project aims to document their final moments, collect traces of past lives from the rubble, and reconstruct those memories and emotions in a poetic and fragmented form.
The works displayed in front of the window are “suiseki (*).” Each is presented as a poetic object evoking the memory or imagined landscapes of the machiyas. They are composed of minerals (stones) paired with hand-carved wooden bases. Maxime selected evocative fragments of stone from the demolition sites and, using techniques learned from Noh mask masters and lacquer artisans, carved and lacquered the bases to create these suiseki himself.