This is Matsuura’s first solo show in mainland China, showcasing a large-scale installation that makes use of BTAP’s generous exhibition space to exhibit new works made out of light boxes and other materials. Matsuura was born in 1964 in Tokyo. He joined Task Force Ltd. in 1984 as a graphic designer for packaging, logos and book bindings. Since 1999, he has been creating ‘character illustration’ works that combine poster, package and skateboard design. His solo exhibition‘Super Acrylic Skin’ held at Tokyo Gallery in 2005 marked his career shift to being an artist, and Matsuura has since been expanding his practice to work in a variety of formats – painting, sculpture and limited-edition multiples - both in Japan and abroad. An artist whose international reputation has been growing year by year, Matsuura was most recently invited to hold a solo exhibition this year at Eslite Gallery in Taiwan. In contemporary society, these characters have become commonplace, with people consuming them on a daily basis. For Matsuura, who grew up in such an environment and has also worked as a creator of these characters, these boys and girls were an extremely familiar and intimate presence even though they existed in an entirely fictional world. The characters in Matsuura’s work with their ‘super acrylic skin’ possess an interior dimension that is invisible to the outsider, existing only within the surface of the painting. They transcend the world of anthropomorphic images, appearing before our eyes by assuming an existence that is equivalent to our own. For this ‘Super Acrylic Skin - Photon’ exhibition, Matsuura has switched his choice of support from canvas to LED light box, turning his characters into massive light sources that have materialized in the space of the gallery. The body heat emanating from these imaginary characters has been transformed into photon particles that scatter about, stimulating our senses. Filled with photons, the exhibition space will resonate with an otherworldly pulsation that radiates from the body heat of these fictional characters.

Comments from the artist
“Instead of the next-generation human figures (characters) that I normally portray using acrylic on canvas, for this exhibition I have replaced these materials with LEDs - a smart, ecologically-conscious light source for the future that is free of ultra-violet and infra-red rays, and which produces less heat radiation. In addition, I also attempted to express the “sacred” nature of these qualities through a medium that is both “digital” and “cool” by depicting an ideal human race (of characters) that ought to inherit a future planet Earth. The light that they give off can be an intense, luminous form of illumination that radiates from a sense of joy or pleasure, or a faint trace of light that emerges from dark feelings of anger or sadness. I hope viewers will able to sense the “imaginary temperature” of the various photons and light particles that emanate from these characters.”

(Matsuura Hiroyuki, September, 2009)