Tomokazu Matsuyama exhibition: 'Liberation Back Home'
Displaying works both within and on the façade of the SCAD Museum of Art, Tomokazu Matsuyama presents large-scale paintings and sculpture that blur distinctions between interiority and exteriority, Eastern and Western, and past and present. A first-generation Japanese American, the artist was born in Japan, moved to Southern California with his family at age eight, and has spent more than two decades in New York, channeling these experiences of cultural change and learning into his work. Matsuyama depicts figures within intricate domestic spaces, drawing from a broad visual vocabulary ranging from the refined tradition of Nihonga painting to contemporary Japanese aesthetics, and blending references to American editorial photography, the bold, graphic sensibilities found in West Coast subcultures, and icons of Eastern and Western art histories.
These works are meticulously constructed through a mix of hand-drawn and digital techniques, combining patterns and symbols to reflect shifting notions of identity and meaning in a globalized world. Inspired by daily life in cities, each painting synthesizes a barrage of visual information, treating what is traditionally considered high or low culture with equal attention and care. The exhibition includes works from First Last, a series influenced by the artist’s religious upbringing that incorporates elements from Western art historical depictions of Biblical scenes. Collectively, these works explore how stories and the images they conjure have multiplied over centuries and across communities, revealing the myriad ways context shapes perspectives of one’s self and society.
About the artist
Tomokazu Matsuyama (b. 1976, Gifu, Japan; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) earned his M.F.A. in communications design from the Pratt Institute, New York. Major public art projects include Color of the City for the Houston Bowery Wall program, New York; Hanao at the JR Shinjuku Station East Square, Tokyo; and Wheels of Fortune at Meiji Shrine, Tokyo, as part of the 2020 Jingu Gaien Art Festival. Matsuyama’s important exhibitions include FIRST LAST at Azabudai Hills Gallery, Tokyo; Mythologiques for the Arsenale at the 60th Venice Biennale; and MATSUYAMA Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape at Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan, and Shanghai Powerlong Museum. His work was also featured in Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &... at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Matsuyama’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark.; Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid; The Royal Family, Prince of Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Bank of Sharjah, Dubai; Microsoft, and more.