All the works created by Matsuyama, grouped together under the name of the Japanese ideogram Shin-On, are an attempt to synthesize two experiences, at first sight paradoxical, at the heart of his art: that of painting and that of sound. For the artist the Shin-On is painting as the visual horizon of acoustics. So it is the challenge of synthesizing and balancing two worlds that are a priori incompatible that he is trying to take up in each work: the intrinsic silence of the canvas and its possible openings onto the dimension of sound. Sound – and in his view it can only be conceived in its highest form, that of transcendent, spiritual music – and its visual representation.
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