Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama will take his place in the spotlight during Los Angeles Art Week, bringing his international metropolis, eclectic vision to the Star City, a huge new painting in Frieze and engaging digital work Solo booths Hollywood TCL Chinese Theater exterior wall. In anticipation of these milestones, the observer met with Matsuyama at his Greenland Studio to discuss his process, life journey, and his approach to multifaceted practices that took his personal universe across the media.
Matsuyama’s art embodies the cultural mobility that defines the experience of dispersion and global identity, which reflects the constant interaction of narratives that shape individual cross-border movements. Matsuyama goes beyond the long-standing pop culture concept associated with pop art, which stems from repertoire of global imagery and influence. “When I arrived in the United States, I was a minority, but even in Japan, I was my father and a pastor.” “I couldn't adapt throughout my life. Now everyone is trying to adapt to the world. In me In my work, I adapted to different influences to reflect us.”
Matsuyama's intensively layered works capture the full complexity of today's cultural and aesthetic landscape, thus blending a variety of visual languages. His work freely incorporates globally universal elements of American consumer culture and mentions nods to critical moments in art history along with Japanese prints and hundreds of years of art traditions.
For Matsuyama, the difference between low and high culture dissolves in the same job – advertising clips and mass market cereal brands coexist and coexist with the latest designs of Balenciaga or Chanel, and with classical art and old The masters are intertwined. Leonardo's works The last supperFor example, it may reappear within American supermarkets, with its sacred geometry reused in the language of consumer culture. Everything is absorbed, processed and reassembled onto a painting plane, reflecting the way information is consumed and flattened in our everyday digital experience. Matsuyama's work is presented in a comic-style flatness and an oriental traditional landscape, reflecting a world where cultural and commercial symbols are greater than life.
His paintings become the perfect mirror of the chaos of data, information and images that saturate contemporary media, revealing how these ruthless streams constantly affect our perception of reality. However, in this eclectic overload, his work reaches a stunning sense of balance, creating a seamless collapse of international and intercultural references. Through this process, Matsuyama reveals a fundamental truth–cultural history itself has always been an endless continuity of communication, pollution and hybridization, and the blurred boundaries and reshaping are constant.
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Still, what makes Matsuyama's work even more tempting is that he carefully examines the design and symbolic strategies behind them when adapting to the symbols that define contemporary popular culture. During our visit, it was clear that Tomokazu Matsuyama's studio was not just a workspace for the artist, it was a comprehensive production center, a “factory” with about thirty people contributing to his process . These are not just assistants to help with painting; many people are stationed behind computers for in-depth research to conduct in-depth research on advertising and products of consumer culture. The goal is not only to reference these symbols, but to replicate their mechanisms accurately. “I call it R&D – my research,” Matsuyama explained. “Once one idea comes, I bring them all the secondary ideas, maybe ten, print out some examples, and then they do the research and find hundreds of examples. From this, I'm going to build a concept.”
As we discuss this highly specialized system, Mashan Mountain shows us a huge painting ongoing, depicting the entire corridor of an American supermarket lined with thousands of cereal boxes. On nearby tables, photos of boxes were arranged to mimic the way they actually appeared on store shelves.
Matsuyama follows the observer to browse the precise and organized process behind the canvas. His studio purchased a large number of cereal boxes and made subtle modifications to the original packaging to manipulate the way they interact with others in the final commercial release. “We bought them all, scan them, put them, and paint and copy them. We brought this consumer reality to the last canvas,” Matsuyama said with a smile. Once the perfect image is found, he will repaint it and repaint it. “All of this is talking about the reflection of Asian reincarnation in the American lifestyle reincarnation: Here you eat sugar, you get diabetes, go to the hospital, and then try to solve yourself with a prescription,” he said. Will hold what he calls zombie drugs. “You know, people die from sleeping pills like Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.”
In fact, it seems that such a playful assembly is a complex novel – intentional cultural mix, carefully crafted and scientifically structured to analyze and visually test the audience's reaction to these symbols. In this sense, Matsuyama and its studios may be more dedicated to Warhol’s legacy of consumer culture analysis and approach it with additional intent and rigorous symbolic and cultural studies. And Warhol's Campbell's soup pot and Coca-Cola bottle Matsuyama's work reflects the omniscience of consumer goods in everyday life, as well as the potential threat of internal death and depression, further research is conducted to dissect the globalization mechanisms that shape our visual and cultural environment.
exist You, I'll erase itanother huge work, the salon-style suspension becomes a kaleidoscope of iconic artworks from throughout art history and is freely granted and reinterpreted through Matsuyama's Chameleonic style. At its center, the tragic reinterpretation of Artemisia Gentileschi Judith and Hollovens The explosion exploded in psychedelic colors, flanked by Chinowen and traditional Chinese ceramics, complicating the infinite threads of cross-cultural exchange. It is worth noting that each of these large-scale canvases takes about five months to Matsuyama's studio, from conception and design through execution and completion, emphasizing the meticulous nature of his process.
Meanwhile, Matsuyama’s highly structured studio is an incubator of emerging Japanese talents, providing young creatives with opportunities to work in the United States and bringing inspiration to their careers. Each member of his studio is from Japan, and Matsuyama cultivates an environment where Japanese software can be used for work, training and exhibition in the small, fertile art community established around him. In the studio where the Accepted Studios, he not only hires his studio members, but also mentors them to ensure they have a platform to start a career. “Our studio gave them visas, but also provided them with exhibitions. I had an employee running around to show them.
Like Warhol, Matsuyama's practice also questioned the ephemeral nature of society's objects in a consumer-driven world and the ephemeral nature of its cultural significance. But he furthered the analysis of Warhol and juxtaposed these massively produced icons with the halo of historical masterpieces and the “high art” of Japanese art traditions, redefined them in a global framework. “When I first arrived in the U.S. and went public in a supermarket, I was fascinated by these company logos,” Matsuyama recalls. “I was like, 'Wow, I'm in the U.S.!” To me, that was a A very positive thing. I'm not criticizing this country; I'm just observing the reality of how people consume. ”
It is worth noting that when Matsuyama first arrived in the United States, his initial attraction and artistic inspiration did not stem from Pop Art, but rather from Jackson Pollock's expressionist abstraction. This influence still lingers in his work, flickering abstract flickering on the surface of his carefully crafted and precisely designed paintings. As the artist explains, these more spontaneous works are often his starting point, allowing him to establish the color atmosphere and sensory experiences he aims to achieve, although ultimately transforming these impulses through the consumption of the color of the product and the luxury textile patterns.
Matsuyama still calls his paintings “fictional landscapes,” a term that emphasizes their basis in the reality of consumer culture while also emphasizing their ability to transcend cultural and historical barriers. His work extends, his work extends and complicates Robert Venturi's theoretical postmodern visual language Learn from Las Vegas. Matsuyama completely encompasses the contradictions and complexities of American urban life, viewing it as a barrier, but rather an opportunity to share traditions with multiculturalism and reexamination. His work is very keen to the reality of today’s globally interconnected world, rather than the reinvigorating utopian ideals of reinvigorating nationalist narratives seek to impose.
Given the universal resonance of Jiushan’s artistic desire, his interaction with public spaces goes far beyond the appearance of TCL Chinese Theater. Public art has been an important aspect of his practice since the beginning of his career, when he supported Brooklyn painters, working directly on the street and interacting with Passersby. Today, with his massive public artwork spreading around the world, one of his most important interventions is Hanao-sanIt is a huge sculpture installed in East Square, Tokyo’s busiest railway station, and welcomes millions of commuters every day.
Masushan’s art cannot find a more appropriate stage than Los Angeles, a city where pop culture dominates, and the connection between the United States and Asia is deeper than almost anywhere. His presence in Frieze foreshadows his upcoming solo exhibition at the new Azabudai Hills in the Mori Museum at the Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo , the exhibition directly scored an exhibition of last summer's landmark Alexander Calder. LA embodies the spirit of Matsuyama practice in many ways: an international landscape that celebrates diversity, personality and freedom, constructs new forms of expression by drawing from the vast, prosperous reservoir of global culture. “In Los Angeles, I feel like there is a greater need to showcase different races in this country, and when you go over the ocean on the west side, it’s already Asia,” he said.
Working here is also a personal one for Matsuyama. “As someone who welcomed from Japan with open arms at the age of eight, I feel like the city and its people have a very special place in my heart.” “Despite the fire, I believe the spirit of Los Angeles is still full of vitality. and uninterrupted. I hope that facing hardships, the work in trim displays can create moments of joy and beauty throughout the city.”
