When Bijutsu Techo, Japan’s authoritative artwork journal since 1948, devoted its complete June 2021 difficulty to Japan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Tomokazu Matsuyama, critics erupted, questioning the choice to highlight somebody they deemed insufficiently Japanese, even inauthentic. Matsuyama studied economics fairly than artwork in Japan, left for New York to pursue graphic design aged 25 and taught himself to color. He developed his observe exterior the normal hierarchies that validate Japanese artists – the very constructions that rejected him.
‘FIRST LAST’, his present at Azabudai Hills Gallery, presents roughly 40 works spanning portray, sculpture and set up. The exhibition takes its identify from the Bible verse Matthew 20:16: ‘the final shall be first, and the primary final’. Within the portray Carry You Residence Stratus (2024), Matsuyama merges a conventional Japanese villa with a Beverly Hills courtyard; Baroque figures inhabit this composite house alongside tropical foliage rendered in nihonga, a conventional Japanese model. The large canvas glows with saturated ceruleans and vivid magentas, its daring outlines and flattened types producing unsettling spatial rigidity. Combining one-point, two-point and vertical views, the work creates a visible vertigo that by no means fairly resolves.
In We The Individuals (2025), Matsuyama transposes Jacques-Louis David’s The Loss of life of Socrates (1787) to an American grocery store, rendering Socrates receiving poison as a client accepting processed meals. This painstakingly detailed tableau deploys an nearly extreme ornamental density, a deliberate maximalism the place decoration turns into commentary, attaining what critic Akira Tatehata, in an accompanying catalogue essay, phrases ‘centrifugal concord’, as seemingly disparate components reference their unique contexts whereas coexisting in new, coherent visible fields.
Strolling by means of the exhibition, viewers should bodily negotiate the stress between familiarity and disorientation. Matsuyama positions huge canvases at sudden angles, some works sprawling throughout a number of formed panels that reject standard framing. Catharsis Metanoia (2024) confronts viewers with its ghostly, semi-transparent rendering of American marines elevating the flag at Iwo Jima – a loaded historic reference now floating between Japanese and American home interiors, which calls to thoughts the expertise of cultural liminality the artist described to me as ‘being neither right here nor there’.
Whereas Matsuyama’s work superficially resembles Superflat aesthetics with its daring outlines, ornamental extra, flattened views and pattern-rich surfaces, his strategy diverges basically from Takashi Murakami’s motion. The place Superflat is intrinsically oriented towards Japanese postwar tradition, Matsuyama casts a wider web. He samples from sources as assorted as Renaissance portraiture, Baroque artwork and American style magazines. This hybridity is additional difficult by Matsuyama’s Christian background, notable in a rustic the place the religion is shared by about 1 p.c of the inhabitants. His information of Biblical narratives offers him with a visible vocabulary that transcends easy categorization, permitting him to maneuver fluidly between cultural references that may in any other case appear at odds.
Whereas earlier work – like these included in his first Japanese solo present, Hirosaki Museum of Modern Artwork’s ‘Fictional Panorama’ (2023–24) – hinted at Christian symbolism by means of indirect Renaissance references, these new works have interaction explicitly with Biblical narrative. Right here, pastoral scenes characteristic non secular figures sporting modern streetwear – saints in Supreme hoodies and apostles in Nike. Matsuyama’s rising consolation along with his multicultural id is mirrored by his willingness to merge seemingly incompatible visible traditions.
‘FIRST LAST’ arrives at a pivotal second when establishments worldwide are reconsidering what constitutes ‘genuine’ cultural expression. The Azabudai Hills present confirms that Japan’s artwork institution has, eventually, embraced Matsuyama on his personal phrases. The present rejects the binary pondering that when marginalized him, providing as a substitute a posh conception of cultural id navigated by means of visible means. On this sense, Matsuyama’s work feels distinctly modern, addressing globalization’s central paradox: the extra interconnected we change into, the extra fiercely we cling to simplified notions of cultural authenticity that by no means really existed.
Tomokazu Matsuyama, ‘FIRST LAST’ is on view at Azabudai Hills Gallery, Tokyo, till 11 Could
Foremost picture: Tomokazu Matsuyama, ‘FIRST LAST’, 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: Azabudai Hills Gallery; {photograph}: Osamu Sakamoto
