Ralph Iwamoto “Wild Growth”

Hollis Taggart Galleries

[Image: Ralph Iwamoto "Daphne of the Jungle" (1955) Oil on canvas, 44 x 32 in.]

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Hollis Taggart presents Wild Growth: Ralph Iwamoto, Surrealist Works from 1955 the first in a series of exhibitions at Hollis Taggart that will explore various facets of Ralph Iwamoto’s career. Hollis Taggart recently announced the representation of the estate of the Japanese-American artist. The exhibition focuses on a group of paintings from the very beginning of Iwamoto’s career: 1955, when he first exhibited his work in New York City. These surrealist paintings explore the flora and fauna of his native Hawaii, as well as other organic forms, through a vibrant palette and techniques found in the art of Japan, the home country of both of Iwamoto’s parents.

Ralph Iwamoto (1927-2013) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Japanese Buddhist parents. Iwamoto witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a teenager in 1941, and, like many others of his generation who grew up in Hawaii, served in the Second World War. In 1948, he moved to New York City, where he fully immersed himself in the art world, enrolling in the Arts Students League with the support of the G.I. Bill and eventually forming close relationships with artists who would go on the form the Minimalist movement, including Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Dan Flavin. Despite being exhibited in the Whitney in 1958 as well as in several other group shows at museums and galleries across the United States, Iwamoto’s career and work has not been studied or exhibited nearly as extensively as that of his peers.

Though his Hawaiian-Japanese background remained very important to Iwamoto throughout his life, the experiences he had in New York City, as well as the community he formed here, were seminal to his development as an artist. Among other notable experiences, Iwamoto worked as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art from 1957 to 1960. This job allowed him to spend significant time with the work of artists he deeply admired, including the surrealist imagery of Wifredo Lam, Rufino Tamayo, and Pablo Picasso. While Iwamoto worked at the MoMA following his creation of the paintings on view in Wild Growth, it is clear these artists influenced him throughout the 1950s. During this time, Iwamoto also worked at a store specializing in native Hawaiian goods and flowers called “Orchids of Hawaii.” This medley of experiences is clearly reflected in the surrealist forms of the flora and fauna found in his 1955 paintings, which are populated by “an invented taxonomy of kingdom hybrids,” as described by curator Jeffrey Wechsler in the catalogue essay.

While Wild Growth focuses on paintings from 1955, future exhibitions at Hollis Taggart will explore other important periods of Iwamoto’s career, including his experimentation with rigorous geometricism in the 1960s as well as his intense focus on the octagon in his minimalist compositions of the 1970s.