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JACOB HASHIMOTO: WATERFALLS
By Victor M. Cassidy

Jacob Hashimoto cuts rice paper into small geometric shapes and glues the shapes to delicate wooden frameworks, which he attaches to black fishing line and ties to long wooden pegs at the top and bottom of his rectangular, wall-mounted, waterfall-like hangings. The pegs are evenly spaced from side to side across the top and bottom of the piece.

The artist ties six roughly overlapping layers of shapes onto each peg, creating a dense, kaleidoscopic multi-level field in which a given shape may be visible or hidden, depending on the angle of view. The hanging seems to move as we walk past. But is it a sculpture or a painting? Where is the figure? Where is the ground?

Hashimoto's show, titled "skip skitter start trip vault bounce -- and other attempts at flight" opened at Chicago's Rhona Hoffman Gallery in mid-November, but closed early when everything sold. The show featured one ceiling piece along with seven wall works, constructed of like elements but with varying content.

Slip into Vapor could almost be a landscape. Measuring five feet high and four feet wide by 7.5 inches deep, it is composed of paper ovals, each roughly four inches wide, which are mounted on X-shaped frameworks and suspended between 13 wooden pegs at the top and 13 below. White and blue ovals, suggesting clouds and sky, comprise the upper half of Slip into Vapor, while darker ovals in the lower half could be rocks, soil or vegetation. The artist collages long slices of green paper-like grass onto some ovals and puts fanciful decorative designs on others. As the viewer walks by, these peep out to surprise and amuse.

Face Ache at Ice Cream Social measures eight feet square and employs hexagon shapes with a mad variety of designs. Dark and dense above and light below, this piece seems to sparkle, bubble upward, and move in all three dimensions, but it is never busy because the artist alternates decorated and plain white hexagons, both across the face of the work and in its layers.
Hashimoto begins by making wooden frames from tiny sticks, tying them together with thread, and affixing translucent rice paper to them. If he wants color or a design, he collages it onto the paper shape -- nothing is painted. When a framed shape is ready, he dips it in acrylic resin for strength. After creating a large inventory of these elements, he selects shapes of different size and design, and strings them on nylon line, which he employs because it does not stretch. Now he is ready to tie the strings to the pegs.
Hashimoto also exhibited Super Abundant Atmosphere II, a ceiling-hung work made of pale forms that suggest billowing clouds. Apparently one of the "attempts at flight" in the show title, this piece brought the sky indoors and almost seemed ready to levitate the gallery.

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Source: artnet.com