G rounded in the artist’s personal experience of hybrid identities, Memory Lane Memoir unravels the story of Matsuyama's various interests and aesthetics. Combining Matsuyama's signature equestrian series with the artist’s fictional landscape series, the present work is a rare and monumental masterwork. Growing up between Japan and America, Matsuyama is celebrated for interlacing the canons of Western and Eastern aesthetics, yet his work defies traditional categorisation. In the custom of pop art, his work utilises juxtaposing and contrasting elements to create something entirely original. Seamlessly blending stylistic influences from the Kano School, the dominant painting mode in Japan through the 15th and 18th centuries, with the styles of painting associated with the Abstract Expressionists, Matsuyama’s work is truly global in scope and perspective.

 
In Memory Lane Memoir, a confident figure sits atop a horse, flanked by two palm trees and a bird, the backdrop is set against cloisters rendered in a colonial style. Inspired by Frederic Remington’s equestrian statues and portraits, the present work dismantles the authority embedded in the subject matter, giving it new meaning through his use of both vivid and neutral colours, and his wide range of artistic techniques. Flickering acrylics cover the surface of the piercing and dynamic mixed-media composition, the artist carefully appropriating various artist styles and modalities to create a magical, utopian world overflowing with visual multiplicity. The pictorial elements such as plants and animals and the wide range of techniques are deftly quoted from both Western and Eastern historical paintings, allowing viewers from diverse backgrounds to understand Matsuyama’s composite visual language and create their own narratives and interpretations of his work. Along with Remington's depiction of the Western pioneers of the New World on horseback, the present work also references the equestrian portrait of the samurai Sanada Yukimura, by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka. The colonial-style architectural setting is a perfect vehicle that enables viewers to feel the intersection of multiple cultures, from historical authorities and Orientalism, as well as the various layers imbued. In reframing these various art historical genres through the lens of contemporary art, the artist attempts to liberate these traditional images from their historical context, reframing them for our contemporary, globalised world. Following Matsuyama’s solo exhibition at the Long Museum in Shanghai in 2020, the artist made his homecoming to Hong Kong in June, which he has described as his second home, after five years with a selling exhibition Harmless Charm at Replica Shoes ’s.