Biography
Lana Matsuyama is a Japanese-American multi-disciplinary contemporary artist. She creates concept-driven abstract mixed media paintings, drawings, and sculpture. The artist embraces the transient yet continuous nature of art-making and seeks to expose the creative process as a cyclical practice of doing and undoing, as mirrored in manmade environments and nature. Influenced by her Japanese heritage, she is interested in the inherently unfinished, imperfect, and impermanent (wabi-sabi). Wrapped up in these concepts and drawing upon her previous studies in the intersection of art and psychology, she explores themes such as shifting identities and ever-evolving symbols and forms in the collective unconscious and experiments with metamorphosed and ephemeral materials.
Selected exhibitions include: The Other Art Fair London Summer 2023, Affordable Art Fair Spring 2023, M.A.H. Gallery & Béton Brut Spring/Summer Show 2022, Affordable Art Fair 2021, as well as an artist residency at Bankside Hotel Makers Studio and solo exhibition from June-September of 2023. She has been featured in publications such as Elle Decor and LivingEtc, and her work has gained commercial success with Sofa.com, Zara Home, The White Company, Soho Home, TV series ‘The Lazarus Project’, BBC’s ‘Split’, and, an upcoming 2023 Netflix series.
Artist Statement
The nature of art-making is perpetual. Creating work becomes a continuous, repetitive process of building and demolition, creation and destruction, growth and erosion. This process is echoed in the systems of urban construction and the natural world, from which I draw inspiration. Pavement that has been overturned and later reconstructed, waves that swell as quickly as they retreat, the destruction of building façades heavy with layers of plaster only to be replaced by new structures…urban development and natural processes are full of moments that reveal our cyclical existence. They give us a window into the recesses of our resilient, evolving identities and souls, and expose our collective need for ritual, symbol, repetition, and mantra. What can our creations reveal about the self? How does the way we create serve as a reflection of the human experience?