Tomokazu Matsuyama: Morning Sun
On view June 20 - October 5, 2025
Scoll down for programs related to this exhibition!
Scoll down for programs related to this exhibition!
Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center is pleased to present Tomokazu Matsuyama: Morning Sun, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by the contemporary Japanese-American artist Tomokazu Matsuyama (Matsu). The exhibition offers a contemporary tribute to Edward Hopper’s iconic 1952 painting Morning Sun (Columbus Museum of Art), delving into the complexities of solitude and life in a globalized, consumer-driven world—recurring themes in Matsu’s work. To engage with Hopper’s themes, Matsu intricately weaves together diverse visual references that reflect his cross-cultural background and observations of contemporary society. The exhibition will be on view from June 20 through October 5, 2025.
The exhibition centers around Matsu’s new large-scale painting Morning Sun Dance. Of the work that inspired his painting, Matsu says, “While Hopper’s Morning Sun captures a moment of introspective stillness within the psychological landscape of mid-century urban life, his treatment of solitude, light, and constructed space continues to influence my own approach to thinking about isolation as well as my approach to painting.”
In Morning Sun, Hopper depicts a woman sitting on her bed in the sun, alone in an empty room, wearing a plain orange dress and a simple, contemplative expression. In Morning Sun Dance, Matsu paints a solitary woman with a similarly meditative demeanor. However, her environment is far more richly layered: the room is filled with personal artifacts—dogs, magazines, and a luxurious couch—reflecting contemporary material life. Notably, the presence of dogs, while suggesting companionship, also references historical depictions such as Toutou, le bien aimé by Rosa Bonheur (1885) and A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer by Jacob Ochtervelt (1663), in which dogs symbolized wealth and ownership. In Matsu’s work, these animals subtly underscore solitude rather than alleviate it—suggesting not connection, but the heightened self-awareness of being alone.
The exhibition centers around Matsu’s new large-scale painting Morning Sun Dance. Of the work that inspired his painting, Matsu says, “While Hopper’s Morning Sun captures a moment of introspective stillness within the psychological landscape of mid-century urban life, his treatment of solitude, light, and constructed space continues to influence my own approach to thinking about isolation as well as my approach to painting.”
In Morning Sun, Hopper depicts a woman sitting on her bed in the sun, alone in an empty room, wearing a plain orange dress and a simple, contemplative expression. In Morning Sun Dance, Matsu paints a solitary woman with a similarly meditative demeanor. However, her environment is far more richly layered: the room is filled with personal artifacts—dogs, magazines, and a luxurious couch—reflecting contemporary material life. Notably, the presence of dogs, while suggesting companionship, also references historical depictions such as Toutou, le bien aimé by Rosa Bonheur (1885) and A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer by Jacob Ochtervelt (1663), in which dogs symbolized wealth and ownership. In Matsu’s work, these animals subtly underscore solitude rather than alleviate it—suggesting not connection, but the heightened self-awareness of being alone.
Her clothing fuses Western and Japanese motifs—a William Morris textile layered with traditional patterns—while a Sports Illustrated poster of Muhammad Ali nods to her alignment with diversity, strength, and modern identity. In contrast to Hopper’s figure, who gazes outward toward the cityscape, Matsu’s subject turns inward, facing her domestic space. This shift in gaze implies a broader narrative: solitude, once externalized and meditative, is now negotiated through personal space and cultural consumption.
The exhibition will also feature Matsu’s process drawings, which reveal how the artist engaged with Hopper’s use of light, figuration, and abstraction. Two additional smaller paintings by Matsu also reinterpret Hopper’s iconic figure in the orange dress—one from Hopper’s original perspective, and the other from an external vantage point, as if observing the figure from the outside.
“This exhibition offers a fascinating dialogue between two artists from different eras, both grappling with the complexities of modern life and the experience of solitude,” says Kathleen Motes Bennewitz, Executive Director of the Edward Hopper House Museum. “Matsu’s vibrant and layered response to Hopper’s work invites us to reconsider themes of isolation and introspection through a contemporary lens, highlighting the enduring relevance of Hopper’s vision while embracing new perspectives.”
The exhibition will also feature Matsu’s process drawings, which reveal how the artist engaged with Hopper’s use of light, figuration, and abstraction. Two additional smaller paintings by Matsu also reinterpret Hopper’s iconic figure in the orange dress—one from Hopper’s original perspective, and the other from an external vantage point, as if observing the figure from the outside.
“This exhibition offers a fascinating dialogue between two artists from different eras, both grappling with the complexities of modern life and the experience of solitude,” says Kathleen Motes Bennewitz, Executive Director of the Edward Hopper House Museum. “Matsu’s vibrant and layered response to Hopper’s work invites us to reconsider themes of isolation and introspection through a contemporary lens, highlighting the enduring relevance of Hopper’s vision while embracing new perspectives.”
Tomokazu Matsuyama, Morning Sun Dance, 2025, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
ABOUT TOMOKAZU MATSUYAMA
Tomokazu Matsuyama (b. 1976, Gifu, Japan) creates work that responds to his own bicultural experience growing up between Japan and the United States. With a practice that bridges Eastern and Western aesthetics, Matsuyama repositions traditional icons within a broader global context, creating a distinctive style that resists cultural categorization and embodies his “struggle of reckoning the familiar local with the familiar global.” By raising questions of national and individual identity through the formal qualities and subject matter of his paintings, Matsuyama examines the “natural chaos” of our social environments and challenges viewers to confront their own conceptions of cultural homogeneity.
Recent notable exhibitions include FIRST LAST (Azabudai Hills Gallery, Tokyo, 2025), Mythologiques (Venice Biennale, 2024), MATSUYAMA Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape (Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023), and MATSUYAMA Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape (Shanghai Powerlong Museum, 2023). His work was also featured in Pop Forever. Tom Wesselmann &... at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2024–2025).
Matsuyama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Recent notable exhibitions include FIRST LAST (Azabudai Hills Gallery, Tokyo, 2025), Mythologiques (Venice Biennale, 2024), MATSUYAMA Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape (Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023), and MATSUYAMA Tomokazu: Fictional Landscape (Shanghai Powerlong Museum, 2023). His work was also featured in Pop Forever. Tom Wesselmann &... at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2024–2025).
Matsuyama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Tomokazu Matsuyama, photo by Fumihiko Sugino
Matsuyama says about his upcoming exhibition at Edward Hopper House Museum:
While Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun captures a moment of introspective stillness within the psychological landscape of mid-century urban life, his treatment of solitude, light, and constructed space continues to echo in my own approach to painting. Rather than direct reference, I find a quiet resonance in how his work stages the tension between presence and absence—between what is illuminated and what remains unseen.
While Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun captures a moment of introspective stillness within the psychological landscape of mid-century urban life, his treatment of solitude, light, and constructed space continues to echo in my own approach to painting. Rather than direct reference, I find a quiet resonance in how his work stages the tension between presence and absence—between what is illuminated and what remains unseen.
Edward Hopper, "Morning Sun" 1952, Oil on canvas. Courtesy Columbus Museum of Art, OH, Howald Fund Purchase. © 2025 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Through a painterly language that bridges figuration and abstraction, I explore similar emotional undercurrents, reconfiguring them within a chromatic atmosphere that reflects today’s visual and psychological realities. In this way, Hopper’s legacy becomes not a model to follow, but a layered point of departure—one that invites reinterpretation through color, composition, and the shifting nuances of contemporary solitude.
