TAKUJI HAMANAKA
Future Recollection
August 31 - October 2

The gallery is delighted to announce a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Brooklyn-based artist Takuji Hamanaka.  This is the artist's second solo exhibition at the gallery.  It features new works on paper created in the particular technique of collaged woodblock prints.  Hamanaka works sections of prints into abstract compositions that feature repeated lozenges set within a single-color background.

This new exhibition marks a development in Hamanaka's research and process.  The artist looked back to a previous collage entitled 'Windows in a Foreign Shore,' presented at the gallery in early 2020, as a starting point for this new body of work.  The earlier work features a repeated format of colorful rectangular outlines, held in place at strict right angles by a beige background.  It draws upon the artist's interest in the concept of windows, their function to transmit movement and light, and to open the division between public and private space.  Hamanaka has previously worked as a restorer of stained glass.  His new works break the rectilinear structure of the earlier work.  Lozenges appear to pull away from each other, float in the distance, elongate, and contract, darting in different directions.  Hamanaka uses the negative value of the paper's natural color to outline each individual shape and the polychrome intersections of color to fill the interior surface of the forms.  Each arrangement unfolds across a background in a distinct color: brown, gray, pink, yellow, beige, and blue.

As these new works look back to a previous artwork and forward to new imaginative formats and color combinations, the theme of reshaping the past also relates to the artist's print-making process, which incorporates the 19th Century Japanese printing technique 'Bokashi' in an innovative way.  In the technique, a woodblock is inked unevenly, creating a fade or gradient of color when pressed onto paper.  It was traditionally used to denote perspective.  Hamanaka employs this method in his contemporary abstract works, to suggest the volume of repeated geometric forms, which he creates with small pieces cut from several papers that are each printed in a single-color fade. The works mark an important and introspective time for the artist, as they were created during the year of 2020, a time of intense personal challenge, loss, and at the same time a period of creation and reorientation towards the future and its promise.

Takuji Hamanaka was born in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1968 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  His works are included in the collections of the Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, the Fleming Museum, The University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Soho House Art Collection, and Sumitomo Corporation, New York, NY, among others.  Recent group exhibitions include 'View Files: Music as Image and Metaphor,' Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA, and OHR-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS, 'Here and Now,' The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, NJ, and 'Pulled in Brooklyn,' International Print Center, New York, NY.  His works have been reviewed in The New Yorker (Fateman) and Hyperallergic (Yau).  Solo exhibitions include Kristen Lorello, NY, cfSHE Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, and Owen James Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, among others. 

The artist dedicates the exhibition to Mitsuki Hamanaka and Mary Clerkin Higgins.