Tomokazu Matsuyama

Tenkukaikatsu

Tomokazu Matsuyama

Tomokazu Matsuyama was born in Japan, 1976 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn,New York. He received his MFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute, NewYork.Matsuyama’s work responds to his own bi-cultural experience of growing up between Japanand America by bringing together aspects of both Eastern and Western aestheticsystems.His practice repositions traditional icons within a broader global context in order tocreate a distinctive style that resists cultural categorization and embodies what the artistrefers to as the “struggle of reckoning the familiar local with the familiar global.” By raisingquestions of national and individual identity through the formal qualities and subject matter ofhis paintings, Matsuyama examines the “natural chaos” of our social environments andchallenges viewers to confront their own conceptions of cultural homogeneity.