Summary
- Tom Wesselmann’s Cooper Square Studio will open to the public for the first time during Armory Week 2026
- Almine Rech is also unveiling a duet exhibition between the late pop artist and Japanese-American Tomokazu Matsuyama
- The exhibition is on view from September 19 through 26, with timed visits for the studio taking place throughout the week
For the first time since Tom Wesselmann passed away, his New York studio is opening its doors to the public. During Armory Week, fans can visit the space in Cooper Square where he created much of his art between 1994 and 2004 – a significant period in his career.
As an artist, Wesselmann really wanted to create what he called ‘super reality.’ Basically, he took everyday stuff – like you see in ads or pin-ups, especially his famous ‘Great American Nude’ paintings – and blew it up to be huge and super colorful. He wasn’t just painting things as they are, but how they could feel bigger than life.
To celebrate the gallery opening, they’re putting on this really cool exhibit called Wesselmann x Matsuyama. It pairs up work by one of the original pop art guys, Wesselmann, with Tomokazu Matsuyama, a Japanese-American artist. Both artists are awesome at taking normal, everyday stuff and turning it into these crazy, visually stunning pieces – I’m definitely checking that out!
I’ve been reading about Tom Wesselmann and Masaharu Matsuyama, and it’s really interesting how they approach art differently. Apparently, Wesselmann worked from the inside of American culture, changing it from within. But Matsuyama? He seems to start in a world where cultures are already blending together. His art is like looking through a kaleidoscope – he takes everyday images and twists them, but also makes you think about all the complicated cultural and historical stuff happening around us today. It’s really thought-provoking!
A particularly striking pairing features Richard Wesselmann’s large-scale “Still Life #35” (1963), depicting a huge grocery shopping trip, alongside Tomatsu Matsuyama’s “We The People” (2025). In this work, Matsuyama reinterprets Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting “The Death of Socrates,” setting it within a supermarket. Boxes of Lucky Charms and organized piles of Advil blend with artistic traditions and detailed designs, creating images that – like Wesselmann’s – explore how consumerism influences art.
This new exhibition follows up on the successful collaboration between the artists that began with Wesselmann’s 2024 retrospective, Pop Forever, at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It continues their inspiring conversation across generations, prompting viewers to consider the future of painting.
From September 19th to 27th, the Tom Wesselmann Estate and Almine Rech are presenting Wesselmann x Matsuyama. The exhibition will be held at the Cooper Square studio, and because space is limited, visitors need to register in advance for a specific time slot. The studio will be open to the public for three days during the exhibition.
2026-07-27 20:26