|
|
www.misk1.com
When he was in elementary school, MATSU-MTP (known then as Tomokazu Matsuyama) moved with his family from Japan to Orange County so that his father could study to become a pastor. MATSU-MTP’s four years in SoCal would impact his aesthetic for the rest of his years as an artist.
“I lived in California during the second boom of skateboarding,” MATSU-MTP explains. “Tony Hawk was 17 or 18 years old. When I got into skating in elementary school, it inspired me in terms of trying to express something, and was the first artwork I became aware of.”
Since that time, MATSU-MTP has enjoyed a long series of graphic gigs in the music, skateboard and snowboard industries. But he often became frustrated in his role as a hired gun. Though he navigates the dual aesthetic of his New York-Tokyo existence with ease, MATSU-MTP has had more difficulty splitting his allegiances between graphic design and art.
“Funny enough, I’m not a functional, visual, problem-solving guy,” he says. “[Companies] come to me for the visuals that I create—they come to me because they trusted my vision. Then they want to change that.”
“As a graphic designer, there were points where I got disappointed where the client chose the one I didn’t like. I’m an artist and that’s what I do, and I’m focused on that more than the people.”
In his suite, which he shared with Bay Area graf artist MISK, MATSU-MTP chose subtle colors and employed negative space in a nod to traditional Japanese aesthetics. But he also drew from his functional design background, approaching the project as art that would envelop sleeping strangers.
“MISK uses a lot of vibrant colors, so he took the other room,” he says. “I took the bedroom and painted in quiet colors. I asked the maintenance guy to bring every color they used in the hotel, and mixed my own colors in with that. Everything comes in naturally to your eyes.”
“Probably because I’m from a design background, I never want to kill what’s already there. I love adding my art on top of something that’s already designed. I didn’t want to kill it. There was a lot I could add to it.”
“As we become older, we appreciate something that’s indirect. Recent jazz and hiphop—the mingling of traditions, which are reinterpreted for new narrative—that’s what I want to integrate into my art. It’s half abstract, but also concrete, direct.”
|
