A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE and Tomokazu Matsuyama Translate Painting Into Wearable Textile Through the TYPE-XII Project
Seven coats and seven T-shirts reinterpret the artist’s canvases via the label’s proprietary material process.
A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE and Tomokazu Matsuyama have unveiled the TYPE-XII Tomokazu Matsuyama project, a collaboration built around seven coats and seven T-shirts that translate the Brooklyn-based artist’s paintings into wearable textiles. The garments were developed in dialogue between Matsuyama’s layered visual language and A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae, with each piece treating fabric as the primary conversion medium between painting and clothing.
The construction process begins at the textile stage rather than the pattern stage. A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE’s distinctive material process reimagines each of Matsuyama’s paintings onto cloth first, translating brushwork, layered composition, and pictorial elements into fabric before the garment itself is built. Two source paintings anchor the fabric development documented in the project: “By And By Daylight,” a 2023 mixed-media work executed in acrylic on canvas at 120 by 100 inches, and “The True Oasis Erase,” a 2025 piece produced through ink, acrylic, collagraph, relief, engraving, jigsaw, pochoir, and collage with hand finishing at 49 1/2 by 43 1/2 inches. The mixed-media construction of the second work, which layers multiple print and hand techniques within a single composition, gives A-POC ABLE particularly complex source material to interpret across cloth.
Within the resulting collection, the coats operate on two distinct compositional strategies. Certain pieces draw from a single Matsuyama painting, preserving the integrity of the original composition across the entire garment surface, essentially wrapping the wearer in a full pictorial field. Others combine elements pulled from multiple paintings, creating layered compositions that establish new relationships between works that were never originally in conversation. That second approach effectively uses the garment as a curatorial framework, remixing Matsuyama’s catalog into hybrid pictorial arrangements that only exist in wearable form.
Alongside the garments, the exhibition component of the project introduces a further technical dimension through three sculptures produced using specialized 3D printing technology developed for A-POC ABLE’s own mannequins. Those sculptures will be on view for a compressed window at the start of the exhibition run, positioning the technology as an active bridge between the display architecture of the store and the sculptural output of the artist. The exhibition space itself will also carry a dynamic textile installation printed with imagery from Matsuyama’s artistic universe, framing the garments alongside their source material within the same architectural envelope.
The TYPE-XII Tomokazu Matsuyama project is available now at A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE / KYOTO and ISSEY MIYAKE MARUNOUCHI, with global expansion to ISSEY MIYAKE / PARIS, ISSEY MIYAKE / NEW YORK, and ISSEY MIYAKE / MILAN beginning July 8. The concurrent exhibition opens July 9 at ISSEY MIYAKE / NEW YORK and its adjoining MADO gallery space at 45 Madison Avenue, running through August 31, with three A-POC ABLE 3D-printed sculptures on view for the July 9 to 12 opening window only.
