Artist's Statement

As cultures become increasingly entangled within one another through new pathways of travel, the Internet, and other ways of communication and connection, urban centers are becoming increasingly familiar. Signifiers from different cultures form an intermingling patchwork that has now become a part of our everyday lives. In the face of this cultural intermixing, so, too, do traditions and cultural identities seem to have dissolved, leaving only homogenization in their absence. However, reality is not so clear-cut. As a Japanese national living in New York, I can only believe that my experience is much like many others who are now caught within these new urban centers. Our struggle, now, is to reckon the familiar local with the familiar global. My work is suspended this way, between worlds—cultures are not completely blended, but instead form a patchwork of controlled chaos that attempts to evolve into something close to cosmopolitan.

What remains after all this mixing is the underlining of specific iconographies that inform our cultural, and historical, past. It is all placed nonsensically into a new context, where I am constantly trying to reinterpret what images now mean within a shifting world dialogue.

Tomokazu Matsuyama Gotta Get Away, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama Heroic Jam in Me, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama November Through the Ages, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama Nothing's Burning Underground, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 68 x 105 x 1.5 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama There's No Home for You, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama Uh Oh Together Again, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama La vie en rose and Blind Date, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.

Tomokazu Matsuyama Welcome to the Jungle, 2018 acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 100 x 60 in.