PRINTPROVENANCE:
Canvas International Art, Amsterdam
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Canvas International Art, Amsterdam
Acquired from the above by the present owner
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End of Forest
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2007 Acrylic on canvas 92 x 92 cm Signed on the reverse Hiroyuki Matsuura and dated 2007.4.16 |
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Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 420,000 - 630,000 12,900 - 19,300
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Sold Price
96,000 401,674 12,355
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Catalogue Note:
END OF FOREST
HIROYUKI MATSUURA
One of the greatest human cultural accomplishments of the last century was the immersion of our lives in a digitalized environment. Many household gadgets commonly found in the contemporary world are dependent upon electronic gauges and digital systems. In this regard, the works of Hiroyuki Matsuura predicates upon the aforementioned sentiment and acknowledges a world that is increasingly digitalized. In retrospect, the artist started as a graphic designer specializing on advertising, packaging, binding and logo design. The year 1999 is significant and marked the beginning of Hiroyuki’s journey in producing posters, package and skateboard design on the theme of Character Illustration. A series of solo exhibition since 2005 further facilitated advancement in his career as an artist. In essence, the artist's work predicates upon notions of the prevalence of the digital culture and how it extends to our everyday lives, he strives to amplify the potential in these images as he believes that their existence within the monitor frame is no different from the views outside our window frames.
In End of Forest, the bulbous mushroom head frames the innocent face of the character adorned with a hooded dark charcoal ensemble over its head seems to speak directly to its audience. The various tones of greys utilized on the canvas delicately extenuate the acrylic sheen of the icy-grey pupils of the figure that conveys a sense of innocent demeanor through its direct gaze, who is not shown in its entirety creating a contextual narrative that extends beyond the confines of the canvas. The highly decorative works of Matsuura Hiroyuki can be considered as a part of neo-Japanism, where the various shades of the same color and the clean lines bordering the smooth and saturated colors are sharp and stylish, instilling life and vital energy to the subject matter through a combined style of graphic arts and comics. At the same time this attribute greatly appeals and fuels our imagination through a fusion of our own nostalgic memories and subjective senses of one’s perceived world.
The emotions expressed in Matsuura's animatic images alludes to his aim of establishing a symbolic representations of both his daily realities and the virtual realities in the digital world, as the characters depicted on his canvases are actual personalities of those whom he had acquaintance on a personal level, allowing its audiences to relate and connect with the characters in his works with great ease. Hence, the characters are not merely figments of his own imagination, but soulful depiction derived from real people. His approach is therefore very different from the Pop Art of the 1960s; his paintings are not merely part of the animatic trend, but works of art that transpires into the realms of cartoons, animation, comics and contemporary art. This ideology allude to the artist's believes that these characters in the digital age are starting to have lives equivalent of ours, with acrylic skin on the celluloid boards and a soul of its own, their existence transcends the boundaries between an adult and a child, or men and women. These characters will indefinitely evolve together with the digital society and becomes a part of the global culture. Matsuura works presents a juxtaposition between real existence and virtual situations, the colorful bright colors of digital imaging of the new century driven by animatic aesthetics constructs endlessly changing visual forms that nurtures the present taste, while simultaneously connotative of the sentiment that the digital world can be fully incorporated into our lives in this era of global digitalization. These dazzling visual effects bear metaphorical and humorous content that are ubiquitous in Asian popular culture today.
HIROYUKI MATSUURA
One of the greatest human cultural accomplishments of the last century was the immersion of our lives in a digitalized environment. Many household gadgets commonly found in the contemporary world are dependent upon electronic gauges and digital systems. In this regard, the works of Hiroyuki Matsuura predicates upon the aforementioned sentiment and acknowledges a world that is increasingly digitalized. In retrospect, the artist started as a graphic designer specializing on advertising, packaging, binding and logo design. The year 1999 is significant and marked the beginning of Hiroyuki’s journey in producing posters, package and skateboard design on the theme of Character Illustration. A series of solo exhibition since 2005 further facilitated advancement in his career as an artist. In essence, the artist's work predicates upon notions of the prevalence of the digital culture and how it extends to our everyday lives, he strives to amplify the potential in these images as he believes that their existence within the monitor frame is no different from the views outside our window frames.
In End of Forest, the bulbous mushroom head frames the innocent face of the character adorned with a hooded dark charcoal ensemble over its head seems to speak directly to its audience. The various tones of greys utilized on the canvas delicately extenuate the acrylic sheen of the icy-grey pupils of the figure that conveys a sense of innocent demeanor through its direct gaze, who is not shown in its entirety creating a contextual narrative that extends beyond the confines of the canvas. The highly decorative works of Matsuura Hiroyuki can be considered as a part of neo-Japanism, where the various shades of the same color and the clean lines bordering the smooth and saturated colors are sharp and stylish, instilling life and vital energy to the subject matter through a combined style of graphic arts and comics. At the same time this attribute greatly appeals and fuels our imagination through a fusion of our own nostalgic memories and subjective senses of one’s perceived world.
The emotions expressed in Matsuura's animatic images alludes to his aim of establishing a symbolic representations of both his daily realities and the virtual realities in the digital world, as the characters depicted on his canvases are actual personalities of those whom he had acquaintance on a personal level, allowing its audiences to relate and connect with the characters in his works with great ease. Hence, the characters are not merely figments of his own imagination, but soulful depiction derived from real people. His approach is therefore very different from the Pop Art of the 1960s; his paintings are not merely part of the animatic trend, but works of art that transpires into the realms of cartoons, animation, comics and contemporary art. This ideology allude to the artist's believes that these characters in the digital age are starting to have lives equivalent of ours, with acrylic skin on the celluloid boards and a soul of its own, their existence transcends the boundaries between an adult and a child, or men and women. These characters will indefinitely evolve together with the digital society and becomes a part of the global culture. Matsuura works presents a juxtaposition between real existence and virtual situations, the colorful bright colors of digital imaging of the new century driven by animatic aesthetics constructs endlessly changing visual forms that nurtures the present taste, while simultaneously connotative of the sentiment that the digital world can be fully incorporated into our lives in this era of global digitalization. These dazzling visual effects bear metaphorical and humorous content that are ubiquitous in Asian popular culture today.