Fine Art Magazine Blog

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

An exciting public exhibition at Tom Wesselman's Cooper Square Studio Septembet 19-27,2026. See reservation slots available in the link below.

THis is exciting as a retrospective slice of visual history seen by Tom Wesselmann, in the USA, and Matsuyama in Japan artistic statements similar tones communicating visual language for cultural messaging. Scroll down ot the bottom to see the link for booking a walkthrough time for viewing this exhibit.

Tom Wesselmann’s Cooper Square Studio Opens to the Public for the First Time with Special Exhibition Wesselmann x Matsuyama

Presented by the Estate of Tom Wesselmann, the exhibition brings together works by Wesselmann and Matsuyama, on view from September 19 through September 27, 2026

L: Tom Wesselmann, Detail of Still Life #35, 1963, oil and collage on canvas, 120 x 192 inches. Courtesy of the Estate. R: Matsuyama, Detail of We The People, 2025, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 115.4 × 209.8 inches. Courtesy of MATSUYAMA STUDIO.

New York, NY (July 22, 2026) – This fall, Tom Wesselmann's Cooper Square studio, where he worked from 1994 until his death in 2004, opens to the public for the first time. Paintings by Wesselmann (1931–2004) hang alongside works by contemporary Japanese American artist Matsuyama, bringing together two artists separated by history and culture but united by a shared ambition: to transform the familiar into an experience of heightened perception. Installed in the space where much of Wesselmann's later work was created, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter two artists who challenge us to see the familiar world anew. Presented by the Estate of Tom Wesselmann, with the generous support of Almine Rech Gallery, Wesselmann x Matsuyama will be on view from September 19 through September 27, 2026.

That exchange first took shape on an international stage in 2024, when Matsuyama was among the contemporary artists commissioned for  Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann & ... at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. His contribution revealed striking affinities with Wesselmann's paintings, not only through shared imagery but through a common impulse to rework familiar codes of figures, interiors, and popular culture into bold, visually striking compositions. Wesselmann x Matsuyama returns that encounter to Wesselmann’s former studio, allowing visitors to experience those affinities in the very setting where his late practice unfolded.

Wesselmann described his work as pursuing “super reality,” a sharpened state of perception in which the ordinary is encountered with renewed visual intensity. As he wrote, these everyday objects were “not especially significant… until they were isolated and their super-reality potential anticipated.” Once removed from habitual experience and reimagined within a painting, these objects become less things to recognize than things to see. Rather than commenting on American consumer culture, Wesselmann sought to intensify it pictorially, transforming the material world of daily life into one of extraordinary visual immediacy. Saturated color, monumental scale, printed imagery, functioning appliances, and shaped canvases all served that single aim.

Matsuyama approaches the contemporary image world from a different historical and cultural position. For him, the visual world of the twenty-first century is already global. Japanese visual traditions, Western art history, advertising, and the experience of living in Brooklyn coexist within a single visual vocabulary, which he reimagines through his own lived experience between cultures and geographies. If Wesselmann transformed the visual language of postwar America from within its own culture, Matsuyama works within a visual world in which cultural boundaries are already porous. His paintings transform recognizable imagery into renewed visual experiences while simultaneously reflecting the cultural and historical complexities of that global condition.

The affinities between the two artists are especially evident in their treatment of the interior. Wesselmann's Bedroom Painting series merges the nude and the still life, transforming domestic space through fragmented bodies, oversized flowers, and everyday objects. Matsuyama approaches the domestic interior through a different cultural lens. Shaped by a culture that prizes domestic privacy, he was struck by Americans' willingness to reveal their homes. He returns to that experience repeatedly, constructing fantastical interiors animated by saturated color, sensual poses, and lush, competing patterns. Here, memory, cultural identity, and contemporary visual culture converge, extending Wesselmann's exploration of domestic space into the twenty-first century. Both artists further expand that space through shaped canvases, treating the support as an active part of the composition rather than a neutral frame. The result is a painting that extends physically and conceptually beyond the conventional rectangle.

One of the exhibition's central pairings brings together Wesselmann's Still Life #35 (1963) and Matsuyama's  We The People (2025). Still Life #35, a billboard-scale still life composed of four canvases, depicts a table set with Royal Crown Cola, Made-Rite bread, and a can of Libby's Beef Stew. Rising from the tabletop is a monumental fragment of an actual Royal Crown Cola billboard. Rather than simply inserting an advertisement into a traditional still life, Wesselmann transforms the still life itself, enlarging it to the scale of the billboard so that the two occupy the same pictorial world. Familiar commercial imagery becomes an integral part of the painting's formal structure, embodying Wesselmann's idea of "super reality." 

Across the studio, We The People, painted over eighteen months, presents a brightly lit American supermarket where everyday consumer packaging becomes the setting for a remarkable art historical encounter. At its center, Matsuyama reimagines the figures from Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates (1787), one of the defining paintings of the Western canon, relocating them to the aisle of an American supermarket. Cereal boxes and medicine packages become formal elements—patterns of color, geometry, and typography that construct a deep, almost vertiginous space while drawing the eye repeatedly back to the central drama. For Matsuyama, the supermarket becomes a contemporary stage where art history, advertising, and everyday life coexist within a single pictorial order. Familiar brands are transformed from objects of recognition into a framework of looking. Rather than quoting familiar visual languages for their own sake, Matsuyama reorganizes them into a pictorial experience that rewards sustained attention. The new relationships that emerge are not only formal but cultural, inviting viewers to consider how art history, commerce, and contemporary life intersect within a global visual world.

Working in different historical moments and cultural contexts, Wesselmann and Matsuyama arrive at remarkably similar questions about what painting can do. Rather than asking us simply to recognize the world around us, both invite us to look again—to discover in the familiar the possibility of renewed visual experience. Seen together in the studio where Wesselmann developed many of these ideas, their works reveal a conversation across historical moments, united by a shared conviction that painting can still transform the familiar into something newly seen.

Editorial Notes:

About Matsuyama
Matsuyama (b. 1976, Gifu, Japan) is a contemporary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, he creates works that organically connect the Eastern and the Western, ancient and contemporary, representational and abstract elements. His practice reflects both his experience living between cultures and the changing nature of contemporary society in an information-driven age. Matsuyama’s public art projects include Midnight Moment (Times Square, New York, 2026), the Bowery Mural (New York, 2019 and 2023), JR Shinjuku East Exit Plaza (Tokyo, 2020), and Meiji Jingu Shrine (Tokyo, 2020). His exhibitions include Tomokazu Matsuyama: Morning Sun (Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, 2025), Liberation Back Home (SCAD Museum of Art, 2025), and Tomokazu Matsuyama: FIRST LAST (Azabudai Hills Gallery, 2025).

About The Estate of Tom Wesselmann
The Estate of Tom Wesselmann is dedicated to furthering the knowledge, appreciation, and exhibition of Tom Wesselmann’s art. Through exhibitions, scholarship, and the preservation of the artist’s archives, the Estate works to advance understanding of Wesselmann’s enduring contribution to postwar American art.

Exhibition Information
Wesselmann x Matsuyama
On view September 19–September 27, 2026
Visiting hours open to public:
Saturday September 19: 10-11am; 1-2pm; 3-4pm
Friday September 25: 10-11am; 1-2pm; 3-4pm
Saturday September 26: 10-11am; 1-2pm; 3-4pm
Advance registration is required:
https://calendly.com/tomokazu-matsuyama/matsuwesselmann?month=2026-09
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Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Michael Muldoon Elder founder of Vorpal Galleries honored by Norfolk Press Exhibition Saturday July 25, 3:00- 5:00 PM at the Art Space Retrospective, San Francisco

Michael Muldoon Elder brought the work of M.C. Esher to a renewed interest in the 1970's. HIs legacy and work is being honored Sat July 25. see below info

An ArtSpace Retrospective Exhibition

Please join us in

celebrating the life and art of

Michael Muldoon Elder

1935-2026

It is a great honor to host all of you who

knew of my friend, weekly chess competitor,

and fine arts mentor, Muldoon Elder.

Come raise a glass to his incredible life

and share a story or two or three.

Muldoon founded the Vorpal Galleries in

San Francisco in 1962 and New York in 1974.

As a preeminent gallerist, he brought the

iconic art of M.C. Escher to North America,

and helped launch the careers of many

important and provocative artists.

And yet throughout all of this, unbeknown to most,

he was a passionate and accomplished artist himself!

This retrospective exhibition includes paintings

Muldoon created from the 1950s to very recent.

A range of artwork styles are on exhibit, from

abstract landscapes, cityscapes, and portraits,

to depictions of spatial interpretations.

Curated by Lori Grissom

Hosted by Charles Cunningham

ArtSpace

2231 Newcomb Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94124

Saturday, July 25, 2026

3:00 - 6:00 PM

RSVP

DECENT OF THE GANGES: (Legend has it that the river Ganges comes out of the heavens and, so as not to pierce a hole through the Earth, lands on the back of a God, flows, and is the source of all life.) –Muldoon Elder

info@norfolkpress.com | norfolkpress.com

#northfolkpress#fineartmagazineblog.blogspot.com

#sunstormfineartmagazine.com#artforfun#artforever#arfuncreate#artfunlove#artfunesher

Eugene Healy's work is featured at the Madelyn Jordon Gallery. The abstract seascapes are below for viewing!

Artist Spotlight

Euguene Healy

As we reach the height of summer, we are pleased to highlight the work of Eugene Healy, whose luminous seascapes perfectly capture the shifting moods and atmosphere of the season.

VIEW WORKS

Eugene Healy 'The Boardwalk' 2022. Oil and mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30 in. /Frame: 30.5 x 30.75 in.

INQUIRE

For more than 25 years, Eugene Healy has lived and worked along the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island, drawing inspiration from the region’s ever-changing skies, waterways, and shoreline communities. Influenced by childhood memories of growing up on Long Island and a lifelong love of sailing, his work reflects a deep connection to the sea and its shifting moods.

Celebrated for his distinctive collage-paintings and minimalist seascapes, Healy employs a variety of mediums , including oil, watercolor, encaustic, lacquer, and sand applied to fragments of canvas, board, and paper that gives the artwork a unique raised textured surface.

Inspired by artists such as Matisse, Vermeer, Richard Diebenkorn and Robert Rauschenberg, Healy distills his landscape into harmonious fields of color, balancing representation and abstraction. His work captures the interplay of light and atmosphere, evoking the quiet poetry of the American coastline.