Gifted Unit on Origami and Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes Novel Study
Jacob Hashimoto
Artist Jacob Hashimoto creates landscape-type environments using origami and paper.
Combining traditional kite-making techniques and collage into sculptural environments, Jacob Hashimoto creates massive space-altering installations with thousands of thin paper sheets. Gas Giant was exhibited in Venice, Italy, in 2013. Gas Giant begins its voyage subverting the grid of the white cube on the first floor by tangling the black and white elements of the installation while directing the viewer to the second floor, where an open, atmospheric, and colorful emphasis on the verticality of the space is the climax of the piece.
Influenced by ample sources that range from sacred architecture, post-war abstract painting, the 1990s generation of Los Angeles painters, Hashimoto explores of abstraction and landscape through color, repetition, and even simple marks and gestures. When combined together, they result in the layers of complexity that characterize his work.
Origami Fashion
The End of Gravity
acob Hashimoto uses traditional kite-making techniques to create distinctive works comprised of hundreds of bamboo and paper elements strung together and suspended between parallel dowels to form fragmented and layered fields. The works take into account the spatial considerations of sculpture and the pictorial devices of painting, operating as a hybrid between what are conventionally separate disciplines. For this new body of work, Hashimoto references another artistic practice: each individual kite element portrays a graphite drawing. Values ranging from lightly hatched gray to dense black complement translucent white paper, replacing the kaleidoscope palette of cut paper collage evidenced in previous works. The subtle hand introduced by the traced and meandering pencil lines accentuates the intricate construction of the works’ foundation. The exhibition, 74
White Elephant Prototype
Foldable Lamps
The Other Sun
For this exhibition Hashimoto will build a new site-specific installation compromised of hundreds of small bamboo and paper kite elements. The installation will investigate themes evidenced in his previous work as he continues to explore his fascination with the intersections of painting and sculpture, abstraction and landscape. As visitors walk around, under and through the sculpture they encounter the texture, lighting and angle of the work which shifts and changes to the individual as they explore its architecture from their own perspective, creating an intensely personal experience. Hashimoto’s work creates a sculptural environment conveying a sense of wonder and playfulness.
Armada
Jacob Hashimoto mainly works on a large and public yet still extremely intimate scale with works that also become “a part of the community” as well as part of individual experience. And this latest work by him is emblematic.
At first sight it is, of course, abstract, though the usual figurative metaphors for describing it come to mind: cloudbanks, waves, billowing sails. And yet, however tiny, the individual elements are there to see and recognize. In this case they are miniscule boats. And once the characteristic beauty of Hashimoto’s work has been digested, not as an “extra” but as an inherent part of its meaning, so these other thoughts and emotions also present themselves. Here we are enveloped by these boats breasting the invisible sea around us: these are old and persistent emotions, all the more potent because here they are so airily and lightly expressed.
Silence Still Governs Our Consciousness
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MACRO ROME CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 2010
Silence Still Governs Our Consciousness
MACRO inaugurates the entrance to its new wing with a site specific installation by Jacob Hashimoto. Silence Still Governs Our Consciousness creates a floating realm which anticipates the journey from MACRO’s present to its future. Hashimoto conceived this “cloud of 7000 kites” specifically for MACRO’s new exhibition gallery. The work fills the room like a “diaphanous canopy” evoking in its spectators the sensation of being “surrounded by a mist filled forest of kites and strings - a quiet, meditative, sculptural environment.” The piece synthesizes nature and technology to yield a fluid and organic landscape. This encourages meditation and evokes new readings of the gallery: as a void, as space, or as time.
Superabi=undant Atmosphere
Superabundant Atmosphere, an installation by Jacob Hashimoto includes thousands of shimmering white “kites,” each handmade from silk glued over a tied bamboo frame. During the installation process, Hashimoto and five assistants will string the kites together and suspend them from the gallery ceiling, creating an enormous sculptural cloud rising upward and outward from the rear of the gallery. Although Hashimoto makes use of traditional kite-making materials and techniques, the small kites that form his installations do not actually fly. Instead, they are the modular units that he multiplies and arranges into structures that, while monumental in scale, appear to be weightless. As the light that streams through the gallery’s front window changes throughout the day, so too, will the appearance of Superabundant Atmosphere. Sometimes the installation will seem buoyant and ethereal, while at other times it will appear to be a solid mass. In any guise, Hashimoto intends for Superabundant Atmosphere to convey a sense of wonder and playfulness, as visitors encounter, walk around, and react to its presence.