Tomokazu Matsuyama

Tomokazu Matsuyama is a Japanese painter and digital artist working and living in Brooklyn, NY. His oeuvre combines elements of Japanese art from the Edo and Meiji periods, French Renaissance painting, classical Greek and Roman sculptures, post-war contemporary art, and popular culture exemplified by mass-produced commodities. As such Matsuyama’s visual language stands at the intersection of East and West, as an attempt to depict a contemporary global identity. The artist’s recent choice of the digital medium accurately reflects the superficial, transient nature of present society. Executed in bold, maximalist compositions, his pieces recall the loudness and sensory oversaturation in today’s frantic world. 

Matsuyama received a Bachelor of Economics from Sophia University in Tokyo and an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute in New York. Selected exhibitions include the Reischauer Institute at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Katzen Arts Center at American University Museum in Washington D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney; the Japan Society in New York; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis; and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. Public works and commissions include sculptures and installations at Shinjuku East Square in Tokyo, the Meiji Jingu Forest Festival of Art in Tokyo, the Istanbul Biennial, Harbor City in Hong Kong, Nike as well as murals in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.