The solo exhibition “Daydream Believer” by Katsuhiko Matsubara consists of a group of new paintings created in 2021.
Matsubara treats his paintings like a living thing by layering and intertwining paint on the canvas as cells in oder to form an artistic fictional ecosystem in which a variety of formal and interpretative possibilities coexist. Inspirations from primitive forms, natural phenomena, mythology, science fiction and comics are transformed based on a delicate balance between abstraction and figuration. It encourages the dissolution of boundaries between human beings and animals, past and present, fiction and reality.
His consciously timeless paintings suggest that there might be other ways or realities of existence than the current state we reflect.
The newly created works for this exhibition embody another abstraction of Matsubara’s process described above; like microcosms, the texture of the colors themselves form a kind of ecosystem.
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Katsuhiko Matsubara was born in 1986 in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2015 he has lived in Germany, his studio is currently based in Berlin. Between 2016 and 2021 he studied painting under Prof Anselm Reyle as BFA at HFBK Hamburg where his graduation show will be held this fall. In 2019 he participated in the international studio program of Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin with the Grant of Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation. In 2021 he was nominated for the Prize of the Rainer Wild Art Foundation.
