Naotaka Hirom ”Big Question”
Brennan & Griffin
[Image: Naotaka Hiro "Peaking" (2016) production still.]
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Brennan & Griffin presents Big Question, an exhibition of new work by Naotaka Hiro. This exhibition will inaugurate the gallery’s new location at 122 Norfolk St, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For this exhibition, the artist will present video, sculpture, and works on paper that explore his ongoing interest in the “Unknown.”
Over the past several years, Hiro’s daily drawing practice has formed the basis from which his exploration of the body has generated an expansive set of ideas and images which influence his broader practice. For the exhibition, Hiro will present a selection of twelve works on paper, each 42 x 32 inches (a scale that approximates one-half of the artists body). Here, contorted, self-examining forms and distended body parts, rib cages, hair, legs, genitals, are viscerally rendered and serve as Hiro’s visual lexicon.
Big Question (2016) is a human-scaled bronze sculpture that develops upon his recent self-cast body works: Ass Gong (2009), The Log (2013) and Four-Legged (Toe to Heel) (2014). Within this methodology, Hiro’s reconstruction of his own form and image becomes defined by the limitations of his sight and reach. The sculpture is an attempt to turn a pose into a sign: the body itself becomes a “question mark.” A path navigates the artist’s body beginning at his left finger tips and right ear and passes his armpit, left nipple, navel, penis, and right knee ending at the right foot.
For Peak and Peaking (both 2016), Hiro constructed a roughly 10 foot canvas tube within which he filmed himself drawing and painting its interior. In Peaking, a single-channel video filmed by the artist during the painting and drawing stages, Hiro inserts himself inside the body and the viewer assumes his perspective as he scrawls and sprays pigment within its confines. The pink staining suggests an exaggerated skin-tone, while the drawn gestures simulate wrinkles, hair, and moles. In the resulting work, the canvas is suspended from the ceiling of the gallery becoming an amalgam of the skin, intestine, and distended genitalia. The exterior of the canvas is spotted with traces of pigment resulting from the performance, while the interior remains viewable only through a slit in the surface that is stitched with rope.
Naotaka Hiro (b. 1972, Osaka, Japan) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 2000. Recent notable exhibitions include: Alfred Jarry Archipelago: La valse des paintins - Act II, La Ferme du Buisson Centre d’Art Contemporain, Noisiel, FR (2015), Mirror Effect (2015) and Men in LA: Three Generations of Drawers: Naotaka Hiro, Paul McCarthy, and Benjamin Weismann (2014), The Box, Los Angeles; Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (Solo 2015, 2008, 2007); and RSVP Los Angeles: The Project Series at Pomona, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2015).
Media
Schedule
from May 03, 2016 to June 05, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-05-03 from 18:00 to 20:00