(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)April 6, 2017

MAHWAH, N.J. — Renowned Japanese American artist Tomokazu Matsuyama will speak in the Adler Theater, in the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey, on Thursday, April 13 at 3 p.m.  Matsuyama’s work is currently featured in the College’s Kresge Gallery exhibition Forms and Effects: Ukiyo-e to Anime which continues on view through April 21. The artist will talk about his innovative work and Japanese culture.  Admission is free and open to the public.

Tomokazu Matsuyama was born in Japan in 1976, and currently lives and works in New York. He received his MFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute, New York. Matsuyama’s important exhibitions include the Japan Society, New York; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts;  the Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Museum, Sydney, Australia, among others.  His works are in the permanent collections of Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Royal Family, Dubai, UAE; the Standard Hotel (Andre Balazs Group), the Cosmopolitan Hotel Group, Microsoft Collection and more.  His most recent major exhibitions included Oh Magic Night at the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation in 2017. In August 2014 he was awarded the Harbour City Gallery Public Art Commission in Hong Kong.

Matsuyama’s work responds to his own bi-cultural experience of growing up between Japan and America by bringing together aspects of both Eastern and Western aesthetic systems. His practice repositions traditional icons within a broader global context in order to create a distinctive style that resists cultural categorization and embodies what the artist refers to as the “struggle of reckoning the familiar local with the familiar global.” By raising questions of national and individual identity through the formal qualities and subject matter of his paintings, Matsuyama examines the “natural chaos” of our social environments and challenges viewers to confront their own conceptions of cultural homogeneity.

Matsuyama is 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.

For more information, contact Sydney Jenkins at 201-684-7147.

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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