"Hiroyuki Hamada: Paintings" at Duck Creek Arts Center

The Arts Center at Duck Creek is pleased to announce Hiroyuki Hamada: Paintings, opening June 1, 5-7pm and on view through Sunday, June 23, 2019.East Hampton, New York - May 23, 2019 - The Arts Center at Duck Creek is pleased to announce Hiroyuki Hamada: Paintings. A reception for the artist will be held on June 1, 5-7pm. The exhibit will be on view through June 23, 2019. Hours: Thursday - Monday, 11am - 6pm and by appointment.

Although he began his art career as a painter, Hiroyuki Hamada has been known primarily as a sculptor for the past two decades. The artist’s three-dimensional abstract works require a methodical, time-consuming approach, which takes anywhere from months to years to complete. Hamada’s paintings, however, are more actively narrative. The immediacy of painting has allowed the artist to channel his ideas to the viewer in a more direct manner. “I was aiming to speak a “visual language” based on our perceptions of form elements such as shapes, lines, tones, colors, contrasts and so on. I thought that was the way to transcend our differences as peoples and speak some sort of a common language.”

In this series of paintings, made between 2015 - 2018, Hamada brings us the same rigorous craftsmanship of his sculptures, but abandons some of their transcendent purity for a more allegorical or personal interpretation. In the simplest terms, these paintings are abstractions, but Hamada uses a vernacular similar to his sculptural forms to populate the works. In the context of one another they become a fraternity of somewhat cryptic, highly sensitive characters. The compositions often take the form of dyads, indicating a conversation or parley between the forms and the environment into which they are placed.

”Nameless feelings, unknown events buried in our memories, unknown stories that keep emerging in our collective thoughts, the vast momentum of history that overwhelms us as a burst of emotion, our longing for life, our desire for each other, our fascination for nature, the messages of air, water, wind, light and other elements that are somehow passed on to other matters and energies, the drama which comes with them, and how we as humans fit into all that. For all these years what I’m interested in as I make art remains mysterious and elusive.  It is my yearning for freedom and my desire to fulfill my life as a human.”

It is important to note the political climate during which these works were made. In many ways, the works are a response to the artist’s ongoing concerns about human rights and the flaws in our current political structures. Hamada states; “It is a challenge to express what it is to be human, when our perceptions are so systemically and structurally skewed by the framework of our time.”

June 15, 5-7pm: The Jam Session’s Jazz at Duck Creek will feature Luma
June 22, 3:30 - 4:30pm: Artist’s Talk with Hiroyuki Hamada
June 22, 5-7pm: The Jam Session’s Jazz at Duck Creek, with Bill O’Connell / Steve Slagle Band

For further information, contact: Jess Frost, duckcreekarts@gmail.com / 646-391-5663