NYAB Event - Hiroyuki Hamada Exhibtiion

Hiroyuki Hamada Exhibtiion

Lori Bookstein Fine Art

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Lori Bookstein Fine Art presents an exhibition of recent work by Hiroyuki Hamada. This is the artist’s second solo-show with the gallery.

Created from layers of plaster, resin and waxes, Hamada transforms raw materials into sculptures with impressive scale and infinite detail. Taken as a whole, the volumes he creates vary from simple geometric forms to extremely complicated amalgamations of shaped volumes. However, upon closer inspection, the surfaces of the sculptures reveal a myriad of individual cells replete with painted and sculpted pattern. This part-to-the-whole relationship is a theme that runs throughout Hamada’s oeuvre, echoing the artist’s own social consciousness and his interest in the way individual contributions effect larger systems.

Executed with incredible restraint, Hamada limits himself to a neutral palette consisting primarily of black and white [and on occasion, more coppery hues]. This, along with the absence of descriptive titles – each piece is sequentially numbered as it is completed – gives the sculpture an austere quality that allows for the viewer to bring individual significance to the work. Yet this austerity is not a perfect one. It is tinged with a timeworn patina of dented edges and scratched surfaces, which imbues the work with wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic in which beauty is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. While this is not a part of his conscious approach, the artist acknowledges its presence, noting that momentariness is “one of the most fundamental truths we have.” [1]

Hamada’s work often presents itself to the viewer in seemingly opposing dualities: archaic and futuristic, natural and industrial, restrained and effusive. Indeed, the sculptures are as familiar as they are foreign, and yet, it is this Heraclitian relationship that drives the artist’s practice. Deeply conscious of the omnipresence of social and political issues at large, Hamada explains that within his studio he strives “to find fine balance in elements to see things being harmonized, opposing elements coexisting in meaningful ways, richness and warmth being born out of raw materials.” [2]

Hiroyuki Hamada was born in 1968 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to the United States at the age of 18. Hamada studied at West Liberty State College, WV before receiving his MFA from the University of Maryland. Hamada has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States including his previous exhibition, Hiroyuki Hamada: Two Sculptures, at Lori Bookstein Fine Art. He was the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2009 and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998. Most recently, Hamada’s work was featured in Tristan Manco’s Raw + Material = Art (Thames & Hudson). The artist lives and works in East Hampton, NY.

[image: Hiroyuki Hamada “#73” (2011-13) Painted resin, 46 x 70 x 25 in.]