Masamitsu Shigeta: Perspectives
3711 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016, USA
Saturday, February 15 at 5:00 PM 8:00 PM
Ends Mar 29, 2025
Tyler Park Presents is pleased to announce Perspectives, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Masamitsu Shigeta. The exhibition will be on view from February 15 through March 29, 2025. Known for his paintings of urban landscapes in artist-made frames, Shigeta’s latest body of work explores and emphasizes pictorial and personal perspectives of the overlooked and everyday. The locations of the depicted subjects span far and wide, including cities that Shigeta has recently visited, such as Los Angeles, New York, Phuket, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Zurich. Subjects such as gardens, fences, trees, and buildings may seem as though they are just down the street from you but are actually found on another continent. In each work, the artist plays with pictorial perspective through obstructed views, the absence of a middle foreground, or the reduction of the background—creating a highlight, focal point, or moment of significance that the artist captures, which one may have otherwise simply walked past. The use of framing in the work not only provides a way to display the piece but also allows Shigeta to further push his work into a sculptural realm. By creating custom frames for each painting, the artist gains another surface on which to respond directly to the image they surround. For example, A Broom Tree (2024), which depicts a palm tree against the backdrop of the Hong Kong city skyline, accentuates the toothy blades of the palm with the use of small brooms, evocative of the artist’s upbringing in Japan, where the same brooms were used to sweep at school. Similarly, in Looking Up a Tree (2024), the mark-making and small gestures of the tree become akin to the texture of the inside of a sweater used for its frame—one that the artist once wore. Masamitsu Shigeta (b. 1992, Tokyo, Japan) lives and works between Phuket, Thailand, and Hoboken, New Jersey. The artist received an MFA from New York University in New York City and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2022, he held his first solo exhibition at Tyler Park Presents, titled Walking Around, and has had solo exhibitions with SITUATIONS (NY), 12.26 (Dallas), Gaa Gallery (Cologne), and Parcel (Tokyo). His work has been shown in group exhibitions at venues such as The Landing in Los Angeles, CA; The Hole in New York, NY; COB Gallery in London, UK; and Dieu Donné in Amagansett, NY, among others. His work was recently acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art.