Text by Yanjie Li
Title: Tomokazu Matsuyama - Accountable Nature
Venue: Long Museum Chongqing
Dates: 7 March 2021 – 23 May 2021
The Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama’s solo exhibition “Accountable Nature” was held at Long Museum Chongqing, a private art museum located inside the commercial building of Guohua Financial Center, facing the Jialing River that runs through the so-called magical mountain city, Chongqing, China. Actually, this exhibition was first presented in Long Museum’s West Bund branch in Shanghai last November. With new works especially added to the Chongqing iteration, it features Matsuyama’s recent idiosyncratic canvases and sculptures, including those created during the Covid-19 quarantine period, which showcase his multi-faceted aesthetic language.
The exhibition title “Accountable Nature” comes from the legal term force majeure, which refers to natural disasters and unexpected events that are not the fault of any party and that are a detriment to the functioning of society and the economy. Usually, when a stable relationship is established between nature and humans, people can enjoy the blessings of nature. However, the occasional natural catastrophes may disrupt this interconnection, plunging people into a helpless situation. “Accountable Nature” was such a well-timed exhibition in response to the occurrence of Covid-19, as he believes in the power of people continuing to live in times of uncertainty and reconstructing their lives with the hope for the future.
Before reviewing the exhibition, I will make a brief introduction about the artist. Tomokazu Matsuyama is a Japanese contemporary artist who lives and works in New York. His works respond to his own bi-cultural experience of growing up between Japan and America by bringing together aspects of both Eastern and Western aesthetic systems. Influenced by a variety of subjects, including Japanese art from the Edo and Meiji eras, classical Greek and Roman statuary, French Renaissance painting, post-war contemporary art, and the visual language of global, popular culture as embodied by mass-produced commodities, he has developed a distinctive style that examines the “natural chaos” of our social environments and challenges viewers to confront their own conceptions of cultural categorization.[1]
Wheels of Fortunes and Double Jeopardy, Photo by Yanjie Li
The exhibition occupies the entire three galleries of the art museum to display about 40 pieces of paintings and sculptures. On entering the gallery, two sets of large sculptures made of mirror-polished stainless steel come into view, along with three round-shaped canvases on the opposite wall, which forms a rather well-proportioned view between the works and space. The two sets of sculptures, Wheels of Fortunes and Double Jeopardy, consist of an antler motif with a car wheel and carry the same theme of “salvation”. The deer is regarded as a holy creature in Chinese and Japanese beliefs, and the wheels are industrial productions in the modern civilization, which enables us to think about the question of what is more important: satisfying our material desires or our spiritual needs, as modern man visit temples and shrines seeking spiritual purifications while enjoying the life filled with materialism.
Cluster 2020, Photo by Yanjie Li
In the following room were Matsuyama’s symbolic abstract paintings, combining both the vocabulary of American abstract expressionism and elements from Eastern culture. If you get closer, you will find many deformed birds, Japanese Senbazuru (1000 origami cranes), arranged into the color field of these paintings. Among them, Cluster 2020 was created in the New York lockdown period and contains 33 individual canvases wishing to give hope to the people in such a difficult time as Senbazuru is the symbol of lucky charm In Japan. For me, what’s most intriguing about his abstract series is how he inserted Asian sensibilities into his works, encouraging people to ponder the definition of art and how it can create new possibilities by drawing on the past.
Exhibition view, Photo by Yanjie Li
Apart from abstract paintings, Matsuyama also produced many figurative paintings. Passing through a corridor connecting the next gallery space, viewers can find a sequence of emblematic paintings that depict one or two characters against an imaginative scene in the background. The figures in the paintings are often outlined in simple lines just like those appearing in Japanese comics, dressed in contemporary clothes, and their postures evoke the models in the fashion magazines. However, you would not miss the exceptionally detailed plants and animals in the back that can be recognized in traditional Japanese and Chinese paintings, such as cherry blossoms, peonies, flying birds and butterflies. The contrast of the past and the present with vivid colors make a dreamlike scenery across time and space.
Nirvana Tropicana, Photo by Yanjie Li
Go along the road to the next gallery installed the most significant work in this exhibition, Nirvana Tropicana, which is a giant sculpture work employing the same mirror-finished stainless steel that takes up a whole room. It looks like a cluster of tree branches with patterns of plants and leaves intricately intertwined within a complicated structure. Take a walk around the sculpture, a silhouette of a face appears on the one side with several outstretched arms, and two upturned feet can be seen on the other side. According to the artist, this work was inspired by an event that happened during the lockdown restriction when a storm hit New York, causing many trees to be knocked down and ripped apart[2]. Yet people living there have quickly adapted to the changes and restored their lives, which made him feel that people are constantly facing and reacting to the endless trials of nature. The human body in the work borrows the image of a reclining buddha, expressing the Buddhist idea of the circle of life: reincarnation, impermanency, enlightenment, Nirvana…
Desktop Utopia, Photo by Yanjie Li
The last exhibition room shows Matsuyama’s “Fictional Landscape” series of paintings. All of these works are produced on various shapes of canvases, in which he brings together elements from different periods and locations. These can be anything from customer commodities to motifs found in historical works of art. One of my favorite paintings is Desktop Utopia, which simply depicting a person seated in front of a computer, with a beautiful cityscape outside the window. Instead of paying attention to the outside world through the window, he keeps his eye on the screen to have access to all the information and events happening in the world. It seems the border between “real” and “non-real” is becoming increasingly blurred, which is also an issue facing us today that our lifestyle relies on networks – “what is real and what is unreal?”
I enjoyed the exhibition in a relaxed manner. The fluorescent colors and exquisite details of the paintings and sculptures help to capture viewers’ attention and suggest a positive spirit. Matsuyama’s work is reminiscent of another Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s art that is known for his contemporary pop synthesis of fine art and popular culture. But Matsuyama’s quoting of elements from both Western and Eastern cultures in his paintings and sculptures allows the viewer to sense the connection between the past and the present, leading to new interpretations of traditional themes with our current urban life. Just like he stressed more than once in interviews that he wants art to be functional in society and to be more accessible to the public[3] and he has been working on it through his works. There are also criticisms about his works being too commercial and short of depth. It is true that his art seems to lack an exploration of the deep cause leading to the situation in our social environment. However, wandering around the gallery, I saw people of all ages coming to see the exhibition and talking about the motifs and cultural symbols they are familiar with. In this sense, I think the artist actually fulfilled his aim to expose art to more people.
[1] ‘About the artist’, Official Website of Tomokazu Matsuyama, <https://matzu.net/dossier> [Accessed 12 June 2021]. [2] ‘Tomokazu Matsuyama's Fragmented Harmonies at Long Museum’, OCULA Website, <https://ocula.com/magazine/insights/tomokazu-matsuyama-long-museum-shanghai/> [Accessed 12 June 2021]. [3] Wall text of the exhibition “Tomokazu Matsuyama: Accountable Nature” at Long Museum Chongqing.