In the previous post we looked at an inspiration that has been constantly remixed by fashion designers and creative minds. Leaving aside the final results, that exercise teaches us that we consistently assimilate inspirations from our surroundings, concepts that we often blend with our own identities, our histories and memories. We are, in fact, the products of a multifaceted culture, communicating through a visual language.
Tomokazu Matsuyama is a great example of a contemporary artist who manages to remix diverse influences in clever ways.
Born in Takayama, Japan, in 1976, Matsuyama moved in 2000 to New York where he still lives and works. Fascinated by street artists like Keith Haring, he enrolled at Pratt Institute to study graphic design which explains the graphic quality of his art.
Matsuyama's art, though, doesn't look strictly Japanese: throughout the years the multidisciplinary artist worked hard to combine a variety of inspirations, creating large-scale sculptures, installations, and paintings.
In his works he includes classical Greek and Roman statuary; the art of the Edo and Meiji eras; Shogun-era screens and panels; motifs from Chinese paintings; European Renaissance masters; Art Deco and Art Nouveau; Modernist art history; Abstract Expressionist techniques and American art history. But you will discover more, if you analyze the works deeper: you may indeed spot a fashion reference there or a hint at interior design there.
Recombining all these elements Matsuyama started creating colorful paintings (but also sculptures, some of them integrating Gothic, Victorian, and Rococo architectural patterns) in which his subjects, dressed in multi-patterned colourful clothes stand often surrounded by fantasy landscapes or interior spaces formed by intricate combinations of prints and graphic elements.
Everything is visually saturated and vibrant: in one work characterized by the mood of the Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, you may discover floral prints reminiscent of 19th century British designer William Morris or of an Edo Period kimono.
Yet there are also clashes between poetically elegant moments and the relics of contemporary society with a hint at consumerism: a portrait inspired by a photograph of French fashion designer Christian Dior integrates for example a counterfeit Hermès scarf that the artist bought in New York’s garment district; in other works there are figures carrying a Rite Aid or a Target bag, while you can spot an empty Sapporo bottle, a bag of potato chips and a Starburst candy wrapper in a bed of plants, elements that point at the debris of globalization.
This is actually one of the main themes of Matsuyama’s art - not globalization per se, but our global identities: no matter where we live, we often hear this or that politician boasting with fascist pride about national identity. Yet, can we truly talk about nationalities in our world where we are all inextricably interconnected?
While Matsuyama is not a political artist, his dense graphic surfaces and multiple layered textures point indeed at a world in which the East and the West are combined, just like in the artist's biography, to create fictional landscapes populated by characters that are often portrayed in meditative poses, even though they are surrounded by a chaos, a visually pleasant confusion that mesmerizes, and in which they often seem to blend in.
There is also a sort of fashion inspiration in Matsuyama’s works – some of the patterns in the paintings are indeed taken from his personal archive of historical textiles, through which he creates visual languages and cultural dialects. The artist developed an interest in patterns and textile designs that show deep connections with different cultures (think about Japanese Gingham check and Scottish tartan patterns - they are different but they are also similar in a way).
Finding this connection interesting, the artist started intentionally incorporating different yet interconnected patterns in his paintings to highlight that there are links between identities and cultures. In this way, Matsuyama created a sort of community-based visual language, tackling through his works the theme of "globalism" or of the “global us”. This expression summarizes the artist’s interest in questioning what is familiar and what is foreign, inviting us to look at his paintings and consider among his layered patterns those ones that may be a reflection of our personal culture, remixed with graphic motifs that may be unfamiliar and alien to us, but that are equally mesmerizing.
Expect to hear more about Matsuyama in connection with fashion: after two landmarks solo exhibitions at two of China’s largest and most influential private museums, Long Museum Shanghai and Long Museum Chongqing, and exhibitions in New York and London, maybe one day we will see a fashion collaboration between this artist and a famous maison.
Even more exciting would be the prospect of Matsuyama developing exclusive textiles for a fashion house or starting a collaboration with a prominent textile company. His singular aesthetic, blending the familiar local with the (un)familiar global, and his passion for intricate amalgams of references and cultural hybrids, would allow him to design vibrant combinations of patterns that could serve as a poingnant reminder to all of us - it doesn’t matter where we’re from and where we’re living in, we are all part of a broder collective, a "global us".
Comments