Mixografia Gallery is pleased to present:
“Another Cautionary Tale Comes to Mind (but immediately vanishes)”
an exhibition of new Mixografia® prints by Jacob Hashimoto
January 14 – *Extended to March 18, 2017

Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 14, 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Artist Talk: Jacob Hashimoto in conversation with Alma Ruiz
4:30pm
Light refreshments served.

 

Mixografia is pleased to announce the release of new editions, produced in collaboration with New York-based artist Jacob Hashimoto. This series of Mixografia® prints is inspired by the artist’s practice of creating intricate installations from layers of rice paper and bamboo kites held together by fishing wire. The prints are composed of what appear to be delicate paper kites hanging by strings from atop a timeworn wooden surface, resembling the studies for installations that the artist creates in his studio.

When Hashimoto visited Mixografia in Los Angeles during the summer of 2015 to prepare the maquettes for his prints, he began his study by exploring the Mixografia Workshop to find a working area that reminded him of his studio in New York. He settled on a large wooden table, covered with a lifetime of scratches, peeling and marks, often used by the Workshop’s handyman. He started composing his maquette on the table, and soon came to realize that the surface was integral to his work. Hashimoto unscrewed and detached the tabletop from the work station, and re-purposed it as the backboard for his maquettes.

Not So Much Discoveries as Memories presents a minimal composition of semi-opaque rice paper kites, which spill organically from their wooden backdrop onto a blank surface below. Thin black string suspends the kites, which appear to hang in tension from the pushpins added to the print’s surface. This print’s streamlined design and muted color scheme allow the fine detail of the wooden work surface to stand out. The wooden backdrop is rife with scratches, stains and patches that lend an “unfinished” quality to the work, providing the viewer with an intimate glimpse into the artist’s working rituals.

Jacob Hashimoto
Tiny Rooms and Tender Promises, 2016
Mixografia® print on handmade paper and archival pigment print with push pins
Edition of 27

In contrast, Tiny Rooms and Tender Promises takes on an air of meticulously controlled chaos and whimsy that reflects Hashimoto’s style of working in his studio. Dozens of brightly colored kites, varying in size, color and pattern, seem to be arranged randomly on the work surface, each one tangled and tucked beneath its neighbors. Despite appearances, the artist methodically planned and executed every aspect of this composition, from the position of the overturned kites to the slack and tension of each string.

Carefully composed by layering over 100 unique kites, Another Cautionary Tale Comes to Mind (but immediately vanishes) studies the interactions of various colors and shapes. The print focuses on building cohesive shapes out of overlapping areas of black and red, and carving out negative space between the clusters of kites. This print approaches the scale of Hashimoto’s installation work, making the project truly a feat of print-making.

Jacob Hashimoto
My Chance Passage (side view), 2017
Paper, Acrylic, Wood, Bamboo and Dracon

Hashimoto’s work has been featured at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, U.S.A.; The Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, U.S.A.; Rice Gallery at Rice University, Houston, TX, U.S.A.; MACRO– Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy; Bildmuseet-Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy; The Schauwerk Foundation, Sindelfingen, Germany; MoCA/PDC– The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.; Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, U.S.A.; The Saastamoinen Foundation (EMMA), Espoo, Finland, among others. Hashimoto is scheduled for an upcoming exhibit at Makasiini Contemporary, Turku, Finland. Hashimoto is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Queens, New York.

Alma Ruiz is the former senior Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. With a career spanning more than three decades, her work at the museum focused primarily on artists working postwar in the United States, Italy and Latin America. She has juried numerous exhibitions and biennials including the V Panama Biennial; the Tamayo Biennial in Mexico City; the Second Exhibition of Central American emerging artists in San Jose, Costa Rica; Women Artists on Immigration in Los Angeles; and in June of 2016, she curated the 20th Paiz Biennial in Guatemala City. Ruiz is seen as an integral figure in bringing Latin American art to the United States; where she has enlarged the canon of contemporary art history to include artists such as Gabriel Orzoco, Lygia Clark, and Ana Mendieta. In 2014, Ruiz curated Gas Giant, Jacob Hashimoto’s first solo museum exhibition in California, at the MOCA Pacific Design Center.