This week’s At the Gallery features New York artist Jacob Hashimoto, who draws on his Japanese roots to create three dimensional structures that captivate spectators and ignite curiosity.
Hashimoto often creates wall hangings comprised of thousands of miniature kites (based on the traditional practices in Japan) and updates them by weaving together rice paper and bamboo slivers into complex designs, a unique process which entrances passersby as the illusion of space, light and motion are simultaneously shifted.
“Existing as neither sculpture nor paining, Hashimoto’s compositions delicately float before the eye, mounted on an intricate network of interlaced nylon tread suspended from the wall by a line of pegs at both top and bottom” – Saachi Gallery
His latest project, displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, continues his space-altering legacy. The third and final edition of a series titled “Gas Giant,” which has been previously exhibited in Venice’s Fondazione Querini Stampalia in 2013 and Chicago’s Rhona Hoffman Gallery in 2002, Hashimoto has created an installation that spans three floors with the an assortment of paper kites.
Inspired by post-war abstract paintings, 1990s Los Angeles art scene, and sacred architecture, “Gas Giant” looks to explore how the landscape of colour, repetition and association can create an endless layer of complexity. Described by MOCA as a “mirror of human experience, Gas Giant is a metaphor of possibility and temporality”, those lucky enough to be in the California area from March 1st to June 9th can watch a single white cube manifest into an open, atmospheric display of colour, shape and visual distortion. —Anita
[ Images via Jacob Hashimoto, Huffington Post, designboom | Quote from Saatchi Gallery ]
