Beyond the Walls: Tomokazu Matsuyama Reflects on His Japanese Homecoming

For over two decades, Japanese contemporary artist Tomokazu Matsuyama has stood at the cultural crossroads of East and West, using his vivid work to explore identity, displacement, and the contradictions of contemporary life. Now, with the solo exhibition “First Last” (March 8–May 11, 2025) at the new Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo, the Brooklyn-based Japanese artist returns to his homeland for his first major solo exhibition in the city. The genre-defying show spanned more than ten years of Matsuyama’s practice, featuring around 40 works across painting, sculpture, and installation, and debuting a new large-scale series that lends the exhibition its name.

At the heart of “First Last” is a paradox Matsuyama probes throughout the show—“the last shall be first, and the first last,” a meditation on inversion, hierarchy, and the shifting value systems of a hyperconnected world. A standout example is the work We the People, a monumental new painting that reimagines Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates in a fluorescent supermarket aisle, with Socrates mid-speech, receiving a bowl of cereal. The piece, like many others in the show, merges classical Western iconography with Japanese motifs, pop culture references, commercial design, and spiritual symbolism to create a dense visual field that invites interpretation rather than resolution.

Other works in the show include layered canvases in Matsuyama’s signature kaleidoscopic palette, sculptures that echo the graphic fragmentation of his paintings in three-dimensional form, and immersive installations site-specifically designed for the gallery’s unique space. A recurring motif across the exhibition is the floating, stylized figure—an emblem of displacement and borderless identity—that appears suspended between worlds, cultures, and contexts.

The exhibition was a special celebration at Azabudai Hills Gallery, the contemporary art anchor of the new Heatherwick Studio-designed Azabudai Hills development in central Tokyo. The gallery—an initiative by the Mori Art Museum—opened in late 2023 as part of a larger urban regeneration project that includes cultural, culinary, residential, and commercial components. Located near Roppongi Hills, the state-of-the-art venue is envisioned as a platform for international exhibitions and interdisciplinary dialogue. Following presentations by Olafur Eliasson and Alexander Calder, Matsuyama’s “First Last” is the gallery’s most ambitious solo show to date, transforming its expansive space into a dynamic environment where viewers don’t just observe, but interact.

Whitewall spoke with Matsuyama about the emotional weight of returning to Tokyo, the conceptual scaffolding behind “First Last,” and how color, contradiction, and cross-cultural storytelling continue to drive his artistic evolution.

Exploring Cultural Duality Through Art

WHITEWALL: “First Last” marks your first major solo exhibition in Tokyo. What does it mean to you personally and professionally to present this show in your homeland after so many years living and working abroad?

TOMOKAZU MATSUYAMA: Having lived and worked outside Japan for over two decades, returning to Tokyo for my first major solo exhibition is both a homecoming and a milestone. While my practice has always carried traces of my Japanese heritage, showing in my home country makes that connection more immediate. Presenting “First Last” here feels like placing a mirror between where I come from and where I’ve arrived—offering a chance to reflect, but also to engage with new audiences in a deeply personal way.

WW: The exhibition’s title alludes to a reversal of expectations and values. How does this paradox play out in the new series, both visually and conceptually?

TM: The idea behind “First Last” is built on inversion—questioning hierarchies, binaries, and assumptions. That plays out visually through layered contradictions: historical references next to street imagery, sacred motifs embedded in commercial textures, and carefully rendered surfaces interrupted by abrupt gestures. Conceptually, I’m interested in how meaning shifts based on context—how something considered “high” art in one setting becomes “low” in another, and vice versa. It’s about destabilizing those boundaries.

“My practice is built around that hybridity: collage not just as technique, but as identity.”

–Tomokazu Matsuyama

WW: Your work blends visual languages from various eras and cultures—can you speak to how your upbringing between Japan and the U.S., and your Christian roots, inform this layered aesthetic?

TM: I’ve always existed between systems—Japanese and American, Eastern and Western, religious and secular. Growing up Christian in Japan, a minority experience, gave me an early awareness of cultural duality. Later, moving to the U.S. exposed me to mixed culture and American consumerism. These overlapping influences didn’t cancel each other out—they fused into the visual language I now use. My practice is built around that hybridity: collage not just as technique, but as identity.

WW: Color has always been a signature element in your practice. How did you approach color specifically for this exhibition, and what emotional or cultural associations are embedded in your palette?

TM: For “First Last,” I revisited color not only as a visual strategy but as a way to evoke memory, place, and atmosphere. The palette draws from both Japanese traditional arts and the hyper-saturated media environments I grew up with. I see color as a tool for tension: seducing the viewer while also destabilizing their sense of where and when they are.

Cultural Contexts and Emotional Threads

WW: How does this show differ from your recent exhibitions in Venice, Shanghai, and Hirosaki? Were there specific narratives or visual motifs you felt compelled to show or emphasize in Tokyo specifically?

TM: Each location brings its own energy. In Venice, the work had to hold its own within a global, historical context. In Shanghai, it was about pushing scale and material. Hirosaki allowed for intimacy and nuance. In Tokyo, I felt a need to create a more direct emotional connection—there’s a cultural shorthand here I can use more freely. Some of the motifs, like seasonal references or traditional patterns, resonate differently in this context. That gave me the freedom to explore ideas I might have only hinted at in other shows.

WW: This exhibition spans the last decade of your work. What threads—conceptual, formal, or emotional—do you see emerging across the paintings, sculptures, and installations on view?

TM: Looking across the past ten years, I see a consistent thread of negotiating complexity—of trying to build coherence out of contradiction. Formally, it’s the clash and harmony of patterns, figures, and textures. Emotionally, I’ve been tracing a sense of dislocation—whether through floating figures or fragmented spaces. Conceptually, the works have always been rooted in questions of identity, mobility, and cultural translation. This exhibition brings those threads together in a more complete way than ever before.

WW: You’ve said your work aims to reflect “global realities” and foster empathy. What specific global issues or conversations did you find yourself most compelled to explore in this body of work? Or in each series over time?

TM: I’m interested in how we process reality in an age of hyperconnectivity and fragmentation. Over the years, my work has responded to global tensions—migration, media saturation, cultural hybridity—by visualizing them not as crises, but as states of being. Rather than addressing issues through direct commentary, I try to create spaces where viewers can reflect, feel, and perhaps recognize something of their own complexity. Empathy begins when we see ourselves reflected in unfamiliar forms.

WW: You often reference both high culture and the everyday—pop icons, religious imagery, consumer products. What conversations do you hope they spark in viewers there to see “First Last”? How do you see these elements interacting in the show?

TM: In ”First Last,” I wanted to take the dialogue between high culture and the everyday into even more layered territory. One example is We the People, a new large-scale painting that reimagines Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates—but it’s set inside a contemporary American supermarket aisle. The central figure, based on Socrates, raises his hand mid-speech while receiving a bowl, not of hemlock, but of brightly colored cereal. On one side are familiar cereal boxes; on the other, shelves of over-the-counter medication and antidepressants.

This piece, like many in the show, doesn’t aim to offer one clear message—it’s designed to be read like a visual field of competing signals. The classical reference isn’t used for nostalgia or reverence; it’s placed in tension with the most mundane aspects of consumer culture. In doing so, it raises questions about morality, truth, and how we navigate meaning in a society shaped by capitalism, health crises, and pop culture.

The everyday and the iconic coexist here not as opposites but as collaborators in shaping how we think, consume, and assign value. My hope is that viewers walk away not with answers, but with a heightened sensitivity to the codes that surround them—and maybe with a desire to look again, more closely, at what seems ordinary.

Creating Space for Reflection and Discovery

WW: Having been shaped by various cultures and conversations with creatives across disciplines, how did interdisciplinary dialogue shape the direction or presentation of this show at Azabudai Hills Gallery? What was it like working with this new space to create this monumental show?

TM: Azabudai Hills offered a unique opportunity to think beyond the white cube. The gallery’s scale and its relationship with the city encouraged me to treat the exhibition more like an environment than a sequence of works. I collaborated with people from architecture, design, and sound to think through how each element would engage the space and its visitors. The goal was to blur the line between artwork and installation, creating a total experience rather than a passive viewing.

“The show isn’t just something to be looked at—it’s something to be walked through, questioned, and inhabited.”

–Tomokazu Matsuyama

WW: You’ve described the show as an invitation for viewers to engage not just as observers but as participants. How did you design the exhibition experience to encourage this kind of active interaction?

TM: I wanted the exhibition to feel navigable, like a landscape that reveals itself gradually. There are spaces that compress and expand, moments where the viewer becomes part of the composition through reflection, scale, or motion. I’m less interested in telling people how to feel, and more in setting up conditions where they can find their own entry point. The show isn’t just something to be looked at—it’s something to be walked through, questioned, and inhabited.

WW: What else are you working on this summer?

TM: It’s a busy summer. We have upcoming public art projects to be prepared, and I’m also preparing for museum exhibitions in the U.S. and Asia. At the same time, I’m continuing to develop new paintings in the studio. Each project informs the others—it’s all part of an evolving language. But “First Last” has definitely been a pivotal point, and it’s shaping the way I approach what’s next.