Artist Tomokazu Matzuyama’s sense of place has always been in flux. As a child in the 1980s, he moved from the snowy peaks of Gifu, Japan, to Orange County, California, with his parents, who were on a mission to become Christian ministers. He spoke no English, but found common ground with his peers through skateboarding. When he moved back to Gifu a few years later, his Christianity and West Coast influence marked him once again as an outsider.

        This time, he gravitated toward snowboarding, eventually becoming a semi-pro, sponsored rider, launching himself off cliffs and extreme jumps. His burgeoning snowboarding career ended with a broken ankle, but by then another door had cracked open: Brands aligned with Tokyo’s Harajuku scene were asking him to design graphics for snowboards and t-shirts. Before long, he landed in New York to study graphic design at Pratt Institute.

        There, Matsu saw an issue of Architectural Digest for the first time and his cheeks burned. “In Japan, home is a very private space. When I first flipped through the pages of this magazine,” he recalls, “it felt like I was looking at a triple-X full nude — like, this guy’s naked! He’s showing off his house!” An enduring obsession with interiors was born and Matsu began creating works to live within them.

        His maximalist paintings — layered, hyper-saturated, and chaotic in the best way —  draw from Christian and Renaissance iconography, shiki-e paintings, ukiyo-e prints, as well as traces of modern remnants that bring to mind anime, early Nintendo graphics, and Adobe’s crisp digital precision. At first glance, his work has the punch of the Superflat movement, but beneath the polished surfaces lies a deeply personal pursuit: one that negotiates identity, rather than simply representing it. His figures have minimal facial features, imbuing them with a universal feel. Everything is painted by hand, merging traditional Japanese aesthetics with the scale and boldness of contemporary American art. The result? Work as visually dense as a novel, its color exploding off the canvas as an assertion of hope. Unpacking Matsu’s art history and high-culture references is as satisfying as solving a puzzle.

        For the past two decades, the artist has been carving out a space that defies binaries: East versus West, contemporary versus traditional, conceptual versus decorative. Instead of choosing sides, he asks why art — and identity — must always be framed in opposites. His Brooklyn studio echoes this refrain, acting as a creative ecosystem that is home to nearly 30 young artists who Matsu mentors and sponsors, championing their work and collecting their pieces.

        Though he has exhibited internationally for years and has an impressive roster of public art commissions, it seems like Matsu is finally having his moment. Recent notable shows include Mythologiques at the 2024 Venice Biennale and Matzuyama Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape at the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art and Shanghai Powerlong Museum (2023). His work was recently on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and his booth at this year’s Frieze Los Angeles art fair was widely regarded as a standout.

        Despite this global success, Matsu has struggled to receive recognition within Japan’s traditional art establishment — until now. Last week, his first large-scale solo exhibition in Japan, Tomokazu Matzuyama: FIRST LAST, opened at Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills Gallery, drawing a crowd of over 1,300. As part of the show, Matsu produced BE@RBRICK figurines and an exclusive run of 50 “Modern Art Flavor” Umaibo corn-puff snacks. He also collaborated with A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE on a limited-edition collection of coats and one-of-a-kind t-shirts, available exclusively at the gallery. More than just merch, the bright, architectural pieces, constructed from images of his paintings, blur the line between art and fashion.

        Matsu’s lush, complex vision of modern identity — one that can’t be reduced to a single origin story, a single influence, or a single place — feels made for this moment of upheaval. He collapses the current overload into a balanced tapestry of reality, one that doesn’t lie. “The only way to stay positive,” he says, “is to have hope for the future.”

Tomokazu Matzuyama: FIRST LAST is on view through May 11 at Azabudai Hills Gallery in Tokyo.