32 pages - texts by Angela Vettese and Irvin Hashimoto (Italian/English)
10 colour reproductions - 9 black/white
for viewing only
Jacob Hashimoto Through European Eyes
Jacob Hashimoto's work is marked by two geographical parameters: Japan, where his father’s family came from, and Los Angeles where he lives and works. These two such apparently distant points have, in time, drawn closer together, both as a result of improved transport and, above all, because of the Pacific Ocean that links them. This has led to the increasing mixture of peoples and to the close relations between the two cultures. Nowadays there are many maps in existence that place the Pacific at the center of the world and thus underline the relationship between the two neighboring coasts.
For a European it is difficult to resist the temptation to see in Hashimoto's work an example of this link. From the Japanese side he inherits a deliberate and precise method of working, almost inconceivable for a European, one capable of creating 3000 circles of silk, each 18 centimeters in diameter, which are then suspended by threads in an airy mass that seems to descend from the heavens. For some time, in fact, Hashimoto has been making tiny kites of paper or other flexible materials held together by wooden struts and twine and then assembled in a conceptually simple but practically elaborate method.
What is now on show in Verona is the most recent evolution of a work that aims at occupying space without either the heaviness of sculpture or a reduction to a simple play of light. It is part of a tradition of complexity resolved into simplicity that is to be found as much in a fugue by Bach as in recent minimalist music. …”
Jacob Hashimoto's work is marked by two geographical parameters: Japan, where his father’s family came from, and Los Angeles where he lives and works. These two such apparently distant points have, in time, drawn closer together, both as a result of improved transport and, above all, because of the Pacific Ocean that links them. This has led to the increasing mixture of peoples and to the close relations between the two cultures. Nowadays there are many maps in existence that place the Pacific at the center of the world and thus underline the relationship between the two neighboring coasts.
For a European it is difficult to resist the temptation to see in Hashimoto's work an example of this link. From the Japanese side he inherits a deliberate and precise method of working, almost inconceivable for a European, one capable of creating 3000 circles of silk, each 18 centimeters in diameter, which are then suspended by threads in an airy mass that seems to descend from the heavens. For some time, in fact, Hashimoto has been making tiny kites of paper or other flexible materials held together by wooden struts and twine and then assembled in a conceptually simple but practically elaborate method.
What is now on show in Verona is the most recent evolution of a work that aims at occupying space without either the heaviness of sculpture or a reduction to a simple play of light. It is part of a tradition of complexity resolved into simplicity that is to be found as much in a fugue by Bach as in recent minimalist music. …”
JACOB HASHIMOTO – June 2005
16 pages – text by Michael Haggerty (Italian/English)
16 colour reproductions
€ 10
16 pages – text by Michael Haggerty (Italian/English)
16 colour reproductions
€ 10
In art as in music repetition is a dangerous procedure: it often seems that there is no reason why a work should ever end while wishing that it would. But sequences were used by many baroque composers to create fascinating structures and are, in fact, still as much a part of classical as of popular music.
And sequences, small phrases repeated at varying pitches, might be kept in mind when considering the recent and past art of Jacob Hashimoto, for a creative use of them is never simple repetition but variation. In his ‘ceiling’ pieces hundreds and hundreds of identical kites were suspended to create grand masses, and here it was the different heights of the kites that created the variation. In some of his recent work, instead, he has flattened his assemblage of elements against the wall, and here it is the elements that vary in size, colour, and also at times in material, though they are ranked uniformly in length and distance from the wall. Their three-dimensionality has been compressed in comparison with other aspects of his output, but the myriad coloured elements now often playfully contradict the works’ shallow space. Physically we can see how far from the wall they are, but a step back and the space seems shaken up, small bright shapes leap outwards while others retire and visually seem to be behind the wall itself. The sequential elements give the works their undeniable stability, their monumentality even, but the dappled colours and tiny forms are what add movement, life, and creative ambiguity.
And sequences, small phrases repeated at varying pitches, might be kept in mind when considering the recent and past art of Jacob Hashimoto, for a creative use of them is never simple repetition but variation. In his ‘ceiling’ pieces hundreds and hundreds of identical kites were suspended to create grand masses, and here it was the different heights of the kites that created the variation. In some of his recent work, instead, he has flattened his assemblage of elements against the wall, and here it is the elements that vary in size, colour, and also at times in material, though they are ranked uniformly in length and distance from the wall. Their three-dimensionality has been compressed in comparison with other aspects of his output, but the myriad coloured elements now often playfully contradict the works’ shallow space. Physically we can see how far from the wall they are, but a step back and the space seems shaken up, small bright shapes leap outwards while others retire and visually seem to be behind the wall itself. The sequential elements give the works their undeniable stability, their monumentality even, but the dappled colours and tiny forms are what add movement, life, and creative ambiguity.
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