ART PREVIEW:Jacob Hashimoto-The Eclipse
Jacob Hashimoto uses the traditional kite-making techniques and forms to construct his three dimensional wall works. Existing as neither sculpture nor painting, Hashimoto’s compositions delicately float before the eye, mounted on an intricate network of interlaced nylon thread suspended from the wall by a line of pegs at both top and bottom. Tied to this support are hundreds of swatches of rice paper and bamboo dangling in abstracted motifs.
By Efi Michalarou
Jacob Hashimoto’s solo exhibition is on presentation at Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai. The central work that also gives the title of the exhibition is “The Eclipse” (2017), a monumental installation composed of an overwhelming cloud of black bamboo and rice paper billowing forms, first presented at the Palazzo Flangini for the 57th Venice Biennale. Like Hashimoto’s often but not always patterned, serial, resuscitation of the vestiges of the rectilinear grid, the work speaks to the end of a way of seeing, which, like history and its last man, is also not the end. The elements forming his artworks are a solid color of paper, or a complex, collaged pattern of multicolored cut paper. While the individual components remain more or less abstract, overall, clusters of pattern, stripes, or waves of color are formed, giving the works a pictorial quality that suggests organic forms, vistas, scrolling video games, or even board games. Through this unique process Hashimoto’s works convey an ephemeral wonder, entrancing the viewer with their continuously shifting illusion of light, space, motion, and sense of flight. Hashimoto’s working method is very open-ended, allowing him to sample art-historical references, icons of the every-day, and mismatched narratives within each composition. Through this unique process Hashimoto’s works convey an ephemeral wonder, entrancing the viewer with their continuously shifting illusion of light, space, motion, and sense of flight.
Info: Leila Heller Gallery, I-87Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, Duration: 21/9-4/11/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.leilahellergallery.com
