Timeskip
Hiroyuki Masuyama

The works of art by Hiroyuki Masuyama (1968 in Tsukuba/Japan) shift time and space in a fantastic way. Masuyama photographs landscapes in which all seasons reign at the same time, circumnavigates the world in a few moments or beams us into space. Time travel is more than a fictional possibility for the painter, draftsman, sculptor and photographer. They bring him into contact with fellow artists from the past. Masuyama likes to visit the epoch of European romanticism.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775/1851) traveled from England to Italy several times between 1802 and 1844. Masuyama follows in the footsteps of the romantic painter of light and atmosphere from London to Venice. He photographed in the places where Turner painted his studies. He recomposed the works of the great English master from hundreds of individual photos and lets us experience their fascination anew in a contemporary form.

“Then we have a painting in front of our eyes that transfers its motivic reasons, which are concrete, into the abstract structure of a constructed long shot. William Turner also followed this design principle of Romantic painting. His guiding principle was: 'It is the task of the landscape painter to select, combine and concentrate what is beautiful in nature and admirable in art'. Masuyama recognizes the modern montage principle in this and adopts it for his pictures, regardless of whether he unfolds fields of flowers or panoramas or defines spaces in picture layers or examines the watercolor of a predecessor. If he does, he does not copy the historical model, but adopts its concept in order to create the appearance of a copy instead of a copy. The swirling of photographed fragments of reality creates a new image on an old image that itself emerged from the swirling of its components. The photograph, which pretends to be a painting, ceases to have the effect of a photo.

The time levels merged in this way make it clear once again: Art always has only one present. It's where the thinking about them takes place."

Michael Freitag