It’s probably not proper to suddenly start an artist introduction by mentioning the artist’s blood relations, but Jun Matsuyama is the younger brother of Ken Matsuyama, who recently had an exhibition at NODA CONTEMPORARY. In truth, these two have a lot in common, and I think it might be effective to make a comparison between them.  The two brothers from Iwate Prefecture came to Kyoto and entered the same art university.  From there, they slightly parted in their study of contemporary art (Ken studied Japanese Painting and Jun learned industrial art), and the two were chosen by Naoyoshi Hikosaka to be in the group “Ki.”  And now they are producing works filled with strong sexual elements.  But the way the two brothers handle those sexual elements differ.  Ken takes each individual’s sexual desire and turns it against them, while the younger Jun points at the relationship between the desires of today’s people and the complicity of mass media.  It is clear from Jun’s exhibition this time that the theme of a “produced state of madness” comes from the connection between the three deadlocked parts of media--the cast, the audience, and the producers.

A lot of Jun Matsuyama’s are formed like the three-dimensional figures of Buddha statues and incense boxes.  When you consider that he’s a graduate of industrial arts, then it’s not really that surprising that the works are like that, but I can’t believe that the theme for his 3-D shapes would come from the instable two-dimensional world of mass media.  But he didn’t freely make his objets d’art in accordance with the concept, and if you look at, for instance, his work “the Four Deva Models,” you will find they are traditional sculptures (e.g. the Buddha statue), and it is the strangeness of the overbearing connection of theme and convention that has made the works effective.  But they aren’t the most intense works.  The common image that today’s media provoke has met unexpectedly, yet in a friendly manner, with the Buddha statue, and what you would think to be an impossible combination turns out to be a good match.  The gap between these two images seems to bring humor into these works.

Butsuzo, the Buddha statue, not only has the meaning found in the western concept of “sculpture,” for there is a definite and prepared “front side” to the Japanese art form (for example, Shigeo Chiba’s “Japanese Art, Yet to be Born” [2006, Shobunsha]).  Matsuyama has taken this knowledge and adapted two-dimensional images to the traditional Buddha statue.  This means modern society’s critiques and traditional Japanese art’s critiques can both be found in his works at the same time.