Jacob Hashimoto's Colorful Sculptural Installations at Gallery

5 hours ago7 min read

Stepping into the Miles McEnery Gallery feels less like entering a traditional white cube and more like walking into a three-dimensional canvas that has decided to breathe, pulse, and occupy the very air you’re trying to. This is the singular, breathtaking world of Jacob Hashimoto, an artist who has long operated in the fertile, often under-explored territory between painting and architecture.In his eponymous solo exhibition, Hashimoto doesn’t just hang work on the walls; he constructs an environment, a cosmos of his own making, using a lexicon of thousands of hand-made paper and bamboo kites. These elements, suspended in intricate, cloud-like formations, fracture the very components we associate with painting—color, form, line, depth—and reassemble them into something that demands to be experienced with the entire body, not just the eyes.It’s a masterclass in visual rhythm, where the delicate, screen-printed discs, often bearing abstract, painterly marks or gradients of impossible blue and vibrant orange, create a pulsating tapestry that shifts with every step the viewer takes. The shadows they cast become part of the composition, a secondary, ghostly layer that dances across the walls and floor, further blurring the line between the art object and its environment.Hashimoto’s work has always flirted with this architectural scale, recalling the immersive installations of Tara Donovan in its use of accumulated simple units, yet it carries a distinct graphic sensibility that nods to his deep understanding of art history, from the floating worlds of Japanese woodblock prints to the expansive color fields of Mark Rothko. There’s a narrative here, not one told through figures or scenes, but through scale and sensation—the quiet, awe-inspiring narrative of being enveloped.One can’t help but draw parallels to cinematic experiences, where the setting becomes a character in itself; this installation possesses a similar, enveloping power, transforming the gallery into a stage for a silent, chromatic opera. Critics might argue about the place of such decorative spectacle in the contemporary canon, but to dismiss it as merely beautiful is to miss its profound structural intelligence.Hashimoto is deconstructing the frame, both literally and metaphorically, asking us what happens when a painting escapes its boundaries and decides to build a new reality. It’s a question that resonates deeply in our current moment, where the definitions of artistic mediums are more fluid than ever. This exhibition isn’t just a display of objects; it’s a proposition about the future of spatial art, a riot of color and form that is as intellectually rigorous as it is sensually overwhelming, proving that the most powerful statements are sometimes made not with a bold stroke, but with a thousand whispered ones.

#Jacob Hashimoto

#sculpture

#installation

#color

#form

#painting

#architecture

#gallery

#featured

#art exhibition

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