Hiroyuki Hamada’s works are monumental in impact, but built with delicacy. They are filled with an unknown spirit. There is no direct reference, but one can read the mysteries of the ancients or the mapping of a digital age in their rich surfaces. The forms hold space, rather than make it. Tension pervades, as each mark and tone tell a story of perfection, balance and upset. Hamada spends up to three years creating the sculptures, as he applies plaster over burlap and wooden forms. He then shapes and stains them with wax, resin, and paint.
Hamada, at 18, moved from Tokyo to West Virginia, due to his father’s involvement with the steel industry. Culture shock, language challenges, and minority status were exacerbated by the parallel shift from an urban to a rural lifestyle. In college, after starting in psychology, Hamada became more enamored of art, especially after being exposed to the work of Karl Jacobson. With a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland, Hamada’s art transitioned from emotionally generated art, to a fascination with the abstract, especially the interaction between lines, colors, tones, and shapes in three dimensions.
Hiroyuki Hamada has developed his work with the support of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, residencies at the Fine Arts Works Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for creative Artists, and the Edward Albee Foundation, and more recently, a grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts.
