This painting by Tomokazu Matsuyama incorporates a menagerie of Eastern and Western influences, embodying Matsuyama’s interest in intercultural exchange. The figure, which references a model posing in a fashion magazine, is dressed in a mixture of Eastern and Western fashion styles. The fabrics incorporate a blend of aesthetic references, ranging from ancient Eastern patterns to contemporary abstract visual languages such as Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism. The tondo-shaped canvas and the posing of the figure evokes the work of Renaissance painters, which is another way that this body of work contributes to Matsuyama’s overall conceptual framework of blending intercultural references. He is bringing together iconographies that welcome as many people as possible into his work. Rather than conveying a specific message or meaning, his works create spaces of introspection in which individual viewers are able to construct their own narrative, and find themselves in the work. Matsuyama starts every new painting by perusing existing images of his dual worlds. He browses fashion magazines and advertisements looking for distinctively contemporary Western visual elements. He scans historic texts in search of visual cues to something older and idiosyncratically Japanese. From a broad mix of sources, he amalgamates scenes in which figures reminiscent of fashion models don clothing that evokes traditional Japanese garments while inhabiting backgrounds that echo Shogun-era screens, littered with the detritus of the modern city, such as, in this case, old shoes and fast food containers. Whether outside milling in nature, lounging around a palatial mansion, or sitting inside a shabby apartment eating carryout, Matsuyama’s figures bear an immediate resemblance to the people we see every day in our neighborhood, in our Instagram feed, or in our mirror. Painted on curved canvases that simultaneously recollect mid-century Modernist Minimalism and ancient, shaped tea platters, these dreamlike visions express the struggle of reconciling the familiar local with the familiar global, and perfectly represent the essence of our cross-cultural, cross-temporal world. “The convenience of our time has made how layered our culture is indefinite,” Matsuyama says. “When we see an image, we try to find connections. I accumulate all of this visual dialect and bring it together as though it has meaning, and the viewers make up a story based on their upbringing.”