JACOB HASHIMOTO
Using sculpture, painting, and installation, Jacob Hashimoto creates complex worlds from a range of modular components: bamboo-and-paper kites, model boats, even astroturf-covered blocks. His accretive, layered compositions reference video games, virtual environments, and cosmology, while also remaining deeply rooted in art-historical traditions notably, landscape-based abstraction, modernism, and handcraft.
Jacob Hashimoto was born in Greeley, Colorado in 1973 and is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Ossining, New York. Hashimoto has been featured in museum exhibitions at MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, Schauwerk Sindlefingen in Germany, Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art in Finland, Galleria d’Arte Moderna “Achille Forti” in Italy, Museo di Storia Naturale in Italy, Site Santa Fe in New Mexico, Science Museum of Oklahoma, Crow Museum of Asian Art in Texas, Tampa Museum of Art in Florida, and the Boise Art Museum in Idaho. He has also had solo shows at Mary Boone Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Studio la Città in Verona, Galerie Forsblom in Helsinki, Anglim Gilbert Gallery in San Francisco, and Makasiini Contemporary in Turku, among others. His work is in the collections of LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art, EMMA – Saastamoinen Foundation, Schauwerk Sindelfingen, The California Endowment, The Microsoft Art Collection, Avon Hospital Art Collection, Capitol One Collection, McDonald’s Corporation Collection, Fondation Carmignac, San Francisco’s Civic Art Collection, Tokiwabashi Tower Art Collection and numerous others.
MOSTRE IN CORSO
SILENCE IN FRAGMENTS – 9 JUNE – 5 AUGUST 2023
Makasiini Contemporary, Turku, Finland
The exhibition showcases a new body of work from the artist known for his intricate and immersive works made from hundreds of handmade kites. Hashimoto’s works are mesmerizing environments full of color, pattern and movement for the viewer to get lost in.
During his final year as a student, Hashimoto made about 70 kites in his studio. A reassessment of radical means of expression and media had begun. The painter’s tools were abandoned and the mark of the brush was replaced by what was to be the basic element of Hashimoto’s works: a monochrome or multi-coloured module – the “kite”.
Kites have a long history, since they have been made in China ever since the 6th century, but their story may go back much further, and they have been defying gravity for highly diverse reasons throughout their existence. Nowadays, kites are associated with exercise, leisure time and sheer dolce far niente– sweet id-leness. Kites are vehicles of optimism.
Behind Hashimoto’s kites is the Japanese handicraft tradition, complemented, for instance, by the Thai and Indian kite traditions. But Hashimoto’s ethereal kites do not fly; they are circular, elliptical, square or hexa-hedron-shaped modules, fundamental image-units which when combined can grow into large installations that take over the space. Hashimoto’s materially light art explores the boundary between sculpture and painting, along with questions of abstraction and figuration. Even as abstracts his works contain landscape-like features.
Hashimoto’s art can be approached in different ways. According to a more formalistic reading, the works are about his long-standing interest in the points of intersection between painting and sculpture, and between the landscape and abstraction. Hashimoto is interested not only in architectural space and variations on it, but also in the 3D-kinaesthetics of computer games. The kite-like elements can be seen as being pixels. The interconnected kites form clusters of different colours, out of which enormous mechanisms of movement are constructed, and then shaped by the ever-changing light and motion.
GENERATIONS
Clavé Fine Art
From May 24 to July 22, 2023, Clavé Fine Art presents the work of Japanese American artist Jacob Hashimoto, in collaboration with Studio la Città. In its space rehabilitated by architect Kengo Kuma, Clavé Fine Art brings together a selection of 14 works.
The lightness of the materials used by the artist resonates with the walls of the gallery, covered with «washi», famous Japanese paper. If the artist is also known for his installations that can fill the void of a whole place, the Parisian gallery chose to exhibit dense and colorful wall works.
There are several pieces from the «kite» series. True composition work, circles of paper accumulate and overlap to give depth and lightness, playing with shadows and lights, like tapestries animating the space. Similar to paper sculptures, this work of assembly is not the only intervention of the artist since each element welcomes drawing, collage or painting before finding its place in these compositions.
Influenced by video games and brightly coloured virtual worlds, but also by the cosmology on which Japan has built its identity, the gallery’s mural work also reflects a natural sense of curiosity about the digital age. Between sculpture, painting and installation, art
The artist paints a world where daydreaming and meditation are closely linked to tradition and modernity.
This first collaboration between the artist and Clavé Fine Art is part of a rich European news for Hashimoto, which will be in the spotlight this summer in Italy with an exhibition of his most recent works at Studio la Città in Verona
THE FRACTURED GIANT
Boise Art Museum
The Fractured Giant is a site-specific installation by Jacob Hashimoto in BAM’s Sculpture Court and marks his first solo museum exhibition in Idaho. Combining traditional kite- and pattern-making techniques, printmaking, and collage into a sculptural environment, the artist has created an immersive installation with thousands of thin, hand-made papers. Building and layering his materials within the architecture of the space, the artist composes a visually stunning landscape made completely by hand.
This installation is complemented by the exhibition Jacob Hashimoto: Fractured Giants, which features drawings, prints, and paper sculptures by the artist.
Organized by the Boise Art Museum
Sponsored by Bev and George Harad
