Hiroyuki Hamada: Two Sculptures

IN GALLERY II

September 15 – October 15, 2011

Reception Thursday, September 15, 6 to 8pm

Lori Bookstein Fine Art is proud to announce its first exhibition of the work of Hiroyuki Hamada. One free standing piece and one wall work will be on view in Gallery II.

Hamada received his initial training as a painter and as such, the integration of form and surface are paramount to his process. He begins each sculpture by making a foam and wood core, builds it up with burlap and plaster, and finally applies a combination of enamel, oil, plaster, resin, tar, and wax to create an austere and mysterious finish.

Hamada’s underlying forms imply a deep connection with the geometry of nature, but they remain non-representational. Basic shapes such as the circle, ellipse, and square are gently stretched and torqued under his hand. Hamada favors a limited palette, but he nonetheless conveys myriad ideas, objects, and emotional tones. It is perhaps one’s inability to decisively “place” each work that makes it so richly allusive. Indeed, Hamada’s sculpture may connote an archeological relic, a futuristic spaceship, or the microscopic worlds of cells and molecules, but these are the viewer’s personal speculations, not the artist’s deliberate intentions. The absence of descriptive titles – each work is numbered rather than titled – both frustrates and encourages these open interpretations.

If a true subject can be said to exist in Hamada’s work, it is the communication of pure visual ideas through a profound dedication to material and craftsmanship. The results of his mature works (the two pieces on view, #53 and #63, were made in 2005-08 and 2006-10, respectively) are elegant but not easy. They are a series of paradoxes: familiar and foreign, painterly and sculptural, minimal and effusive, modern and archaic, industrial and warm. Despite this, each sculpture is a self-contained whole, able to evince formal ideas amidst association and contradiction.

Hiroyuki Hamada was born in 1968 in Tokyo, Japan. When he was a teenager, his father moved the family to West Virginia. Dramatically uprooted and unable to express himself in his native language, Hamada discovered a compelling means of communication through the study of drawing and painting. The orchestration of line, shape, and other formal properties of drawing were a revelation to him. Hamada attended West Liberty State College in West Virginia before earning his MFA from the University of Maryland. He has participated in artist residencies and exhibited throughout the United States, and was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 1998. He currently lives and works in East Hampton, New York.

Pictured: #53 (2005-08). Enamel, oil, plaster, tar, and wax, 38 x 38 x 14 1/2 inches