April 17, 2014—May 17, 2017

James Harris Gallery is pleased to announce the second exhibition of works by Jason Hirata. Jason Hirata uses multiple platforms of production in his artistic practice in response to the ecology of the viewer. For each exhibition and its subsequent work, the artist uses different materials and stratagems to the formal constructs of objects and how the viewer perceives them. In the past, he has used light, photography, drawing, sculpture and video. For this exhibition he has created a series of eight paintings.

In Hirata’s last exhibition at the gallery, he created a series of reductive drawings with similar patterns using ink and human sweat. In this exhibition, he expands on this minimalist aesthetic but now by using the language of painting. In each work, a gessoed rectangle has been applied to a portion of raw stretched canvas; then the artist rhythmically marked the surface with simple gesture of color. The marks act as punctuations across both the gessoed grounds and raw surface. The overall compositions question the spatial depth of painting; and its function as a three dimensional object. For Hirata “The gessoed grounds are like the mental structure that supports the image. The raw canvas is the physical need of that structure.” The top edges of the paintings are color blocked to reflect or bounce a hue onto the surface of the wall. Though not visible from looking at the individual works, a subtle tonal haze is emitted from above. Each work is coated also coated with diamond dust making the surface of the paintings abrasive and then with “Never Wet” a product that protects the surface.

Jason Hirata received his BFA in 2009 from the University of Washington. Earlier this year, Hirata had a solo exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; his work shown in the 2014 Portland Biennial, Rockbox, Portland and Center-Berlin, Germany. In January 2010, Sol Hashemi and Jason Hirata exhibited and new group of sculpture at Greg Kucera Gallery. In 2009, he exhibited at The Gift Shop, the Henry Art Gallery’s abandoned museum store. In 2008, he presented collaborative (with Sol Hashemi) performance-based exhibit at Punch Gallery and at the alternative space Dirty Shed.

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