Published on 19, Dec 2022

New York Artist Masamitsu Shigeta Finds the Beauty in the Mundane

NEW YORK CITY, New York – Artist Masamitsu Shigeta is making waves in the national art scene with a portfolio reflecting the beauty of his surroundings, documenting the beauty of New York City amidst a mix of natural and synthetic concepts. 

Featured in galleries and exhibits across the United States, the Tokyo-born artist moved to the States in 2013 to pursue an education. Earning his BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts and NYU respectively, Shigeta is a regularly featured artist, gracing exhibits and galleries including Situations Gallery, Studio 200, scroll., and many others. The artist has turned heads recently as he has accessed both traditional and novel concepts to likewise exhibit harmony between cityscapes and the natural environment.

A Gorgeous Portfolio in Admiration of Both Natural and Manmade Beauty

Masamitsu Shigeta portrays the joy and wonder of exploring a city like New York, a space that can potentially feel cavernous, vast, open, and crowded all at once. Shigeta’s work cuts through these admittedly narrow perspectives on the visual grace that New York City evokes. 

Masamitsu Shigeta utilizes acrylics to exhibit a brightness that isn’t typical of art centered on an urban concept. “I think a lot of people think that the concrete, the iron, the architecture overall can give an impression of coldness, but I don’t quite get that,” Shigeta says. “I always have had this fascination for an urban environment, both here and when I was growing up in Tokyo. I see these skyscrapers as sculptures in a sense. It all holds aesthetic beauty in some way.”

To provide a greater sense of weight and dimension to the natural geometry he attempts to capture, Masamitsu Shigeta crafts unique frames for each piece using materials found around the city and near his studio. 

Shigeta has worked very prominently with Situations Gallery, runs various exhibitions as well as a “bi-monthly gallery-on-paper that aims to showcase the work of emerging artists and art critics, discover and highlight new trends in contemporary art.” The gallery was founded and curated by Concordia Art History Students Katerina Korola and Erika Couto hoping to provide a platform to students and community members that are offering a novel perspective in a scene that is constantly looking for the next great dynamic artistic concept. “Working in that space has been incredibly inspiring,” Shigeta says. “Being around that talent gave me this motivation to take these concepts further. The result is that I’ve started to create work of greater depth to hold this reverence I have for the visual world and all the circumstances that affect it.”

Expanding Parameters of Art Itself

Masamitsu Shigeta has approached his work with a focus placed on offering a holistic perspective, a balanced concept that offers all the dimensions that the subjects of his work provide. “As I develop my artistic identity more and more, I try to give a better sense of an experience translated to a visual medium. This is to say; I try to catalog my experiences in a genuine way. I try to give myself to the experience as much as that experience offers itself to be enjoyed. Those bright moments are what make life worth living or at the very least incredibly compelling,” Shigeta says. 

Masamitsu Shigeta will be appearing in exhibits across the US this January, including Nashville and New York City.