Shigeki Matsuyama: 'Anonymous Heroes'

About

GR gallery is pleased to announce “Anonymous Heroes”, the second solo exhibition of Japanese artist Shigeki Matsuyama with the gallery, from February 16 to March 09.  A total of 14 new works, executed with the artist signature technique, will be included in the show.

With a fondness for the exciting and disturbing emotional fluxes that charge inconspicuousness in the virtual world, Anonymous Heroes acts as a portrait, at times  even a critique, to those intemperate moments of pharisaic ostentation hidden behind a screen. Analyzing and depicting, Matsuyama weaves dystopian influences with the autobiographical to compose imaginative scenes imbued with realism. This series grows out of the artist’s inspiration taken from things and perceptions around him, things like an omnipresent sense of unease and distrust towards new media like Internet and social media. 

Opening reception: Friday February 16th  6:00pm - 8:00pm ET (Exhibition Dates: February  16 – March 09, 2024). Members of the press can contact GR gallery in advance to schedule a private viewing and an interview with the artist. 

Matsuyama takes a rational approach on how each of his work is depicted, focusing on the vast expansion of technology and how it affects the consciousness of everyday life for the modern living people. This peculiar new body of work is themed on individuals who are known for their virtual personae and on-line presence, imposing their own egoistical sense of justice onto others, hypocritically judging and criticizing while without revealing their identity; consequentially all the works feature their subjects as masked superheroes,  mimicking the characters righteous behavior.

To better understands Matsuyama’s concept behind his work we quote his words: “A portrait is a depiction of a specific individual. It became an established style of painting during the Renaissance, and since then, many artists have created portraits with a wide variety of themes. Some portraits have pursued realism while others have emphasized or exaggerated the beauty or ugliness of their subjects. (Source: This is media ”Syouzou-ga”). The series Portrait of dazzle uses facial photos found among the countless selfies and snaps uploaded on the Internet. With a video projector, the eyes from the photos were projected and traced onto a silhouette of another person, whose race, sex, hairstyle, or body shape differs from those of the original, thereby creating portraits reflecting anonymity and the uncertain veracity of information on the Internet.”

Project Room

Concurrently In our project room we will present ‘Blooming’, the first U.S. appearance of Chinese artist Liu Tianlian, who recently relocated to New York City.

With three medium size and one large artworks, this exhibition will give the viewer a comprehensive hint of the artist unique technique and style, throwing him in magical realm populated by whimsical characters floating above a voluptuous and colorful vegetation, reminiscence of a lost paradise, inspired by traditional Chinese narrative and painted with self-prepared inks through microscopic brushes on imported fine silk.

Liu Tianlian (Chongqing City, 1987) , with her luxuriant pallet of traditional Chinese painting pigments (natural mineral and plant pigments) on silk or paper, keep producing new pictorial structures, and use whimsical narratives and psychological depths to mirror her secret worlds of imagination and drama. Her vivid images, switching between tradition and reality, locality and globalization, self and extension, alluding to Asian history, literature, mythology, and the Bible, and featuring human beings, animals, plants and the self, form a continuously deepening visual space, an inner reality more exciting than the outer reality. Her works have been exhibited in the solo exhibitions of Line Gallery, China, and in other exhibitions of Times Art Museum, Guangdong Art Museum, Today Art Museum, Long Museum, etc.