Hiroyuki Masuyama: After J.M.W. Turner

“After J.M.W. Turner 1834-2019” is a series of works by Hiroyuki Masuyama. The show has been installed in the lower floor of the venue. The works chosen were inspired by the paintings of journeys made by Joseph Mallord William Turner, the extraordinary English painter who lived from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Japanese artist has, with great acuity, managed to capture the sense of Turner’s art; he was attracted by the artist’s obsession with the mutability of light, by the resemblance of many of his sketches to the finished works, and by his sheer craziness.

The object of Masuyama’s interest are the watercolours and paintings made by Turner during his journeys to Italy, above all those of Venice. Masuyama’s works, variously sized light-boxes, reveal highly complex images consisting of various elements, which are almost superimpositions and stratifications of images: a cultural and linguistic mixture where the art of the nineteenth century, digital photography, and Japanese culture join together in a perfectly balanced whole.