Shuhei Matsuyama
Shin-On PAINTINGS
December 9, 2004 - January 20, 2005
Reception in presence of the Artist
Thursday, December 9th 6:00 - 8:00 pm
www.shin-on.com
Featured is a selection of the Shin-On (the sounds) paintings made between 1990 and 2004. The focal point of the exhibition will be a monumental, quasi mural painting, titled Shin-On (the sounds) 04130, 1.5m x 10 m (5’ 2.5” x 32‘10”), a magnificent work which represents one of Matsuyama’s greatest and newest pictorial expressions. Created especifically for this exhibition, it resonates through its texture and design, but mostly through color, with its soft pinks blues and whites, making a wonderful sound characteristic of Matsuyamas’ best works. Since 1993, Matsuyama collaborated with six different musicians who have composed music based on his painting. This music, complementing Matsuyamas’ paintings, will be playing during the show.
Born in Tokyo in 1955, Shuhei Matsuyama moved to Italy in 1976 to continue his studies. His work over the last 20 years, is described as a new pictorial romanticism. His position between two universes, the east and the west, allows him to explore this direction, at once pictorial and spiritual, as if for the first time. Grouped together under the name of the Japanese ideogram Shin-On, he is synthesizing two experiences, at first sight paradoxical, at the heart of his art: that of painting and that of sound. Shin-On is painting as the visual horizon of acoustics. It is the challenge of synthesizing and balancing two worlds that are a priori incompatible that he is taking up in each work: the intrinsic silence of the painting and its possible openings into the dimension of sound. Sound- in its highest form, that of transcendent, spiritual music- and its visual representation.
Shuhei Matsuyama had his first solo show in 1979 in Perugia at the antique Palazzo dei Priori. He continued his artistic activities in Perugia where he held further exhibitions in 1980 and 1982. In 1986 Matsuyama exhibited in Rieti and, in 1987, both in Rieti and at the Palace of City in Latina. During the nineties Matsuyama started exhibiting in Milan in 1991 at the Enrico Gariboldi gallery. In 1992 the artist held exhibitions in Venice and in Tokyo (Espace Takarashi). The following year the artist returned to Venice with a show at the Arts Center of S. Apollonia. In 1994 his reputation as a noted artist and a full time exhibitor became firmly established through exhibitions in Bologna, Tokyo (the Informuse), and in Milan. The last of his three exhibitions in Milan opened at the Microbrera gallery. Called “Shin-On ‘94 micro world” it was an overwhelming success. In August 2004 Matsuyama had his first solo show in NYC at the Durst Organization’s Lobby Gallery at 1155 Avenue of the Americas. The works of the artist are present in important public and private collections.
The artist, with his wife and three children, lives and works in Milan. Matsuyama is represented in Europe and in the United States by Stararte Gallery.
Shin-on 99027, 1999; Multimedia on Wood Panel; 150 x 250 cm / 62.5” x 98.4”
UP COMING EVENTS OF Shuhei Matsuyama
-September 2004-June 2005, Matsuyamas’ painting Shin-On 02024 will be featured in the cover of Le Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Dance de Paris’ program
-April-May 2005, Exhibition at the Pinacoteca(Art Gallery) of Tuscany
-July 2005, Installation of Fountain in the principal square of the city of Riety (Rome)
-June and July 2005, three exhibitions in Japan:
Paris Gallery -Yokohama, Ashia Gallery-Kobe, Takarashi Gallery -Tokyo
-August-September 2005,. Exhibition at the City Hall of Treviso
“...the formal vibrations whose slight crinkling make up the pictorial texture of Matsuyama,those emotional quiverings that thicken the field of apparition of the ‘sound line’, that progressive laying down of layers which seems to indicate different levels of awareness in the work, bring out an event which is formal but also holy...”
Enzo Di Martino (1993), critic, author.
“with this cycle of works... Matsuyama tends to confront – his desire – the naturalistic component of his image... the idea of an increasingly less axial and lowered horizon, opening to view an estranged pictorial sky...”
Flaminio Gualdoni (1995),critic, author, professor.
“a taste for the rarefaction of materials... an ideal of art which unifies color and sound... people have been speaking about it since the beginning of the century as one of the great dreams of the avant-garde.”
Ermanno Krumm (Corriere della Sera, 12 July 1999), critic, art journalist.
From the onset, whenever I had to explain
the meaning of Shin-On, I have always said that it is
a sort of cry from the heart, an expression in tune
with the self. It is, to be precise, an expression
of the inner vibrations or energy of the artist and his work, perhaps the true expression of his spirit.
Shuhei Matsuyama
HONORARY COMMITTEE
LAURA GUCCI
DON KIMES
TOSHINARI OSHIMA
LANNY L. POWERS
ERMANNO SCERVINO
REGINA SCHRECKER
JOHN T. SPIKE
Archives contact: Stararte Gallery p 212.674.2753
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