Hiroyuki Hamada
Hiroyuki Hamada: New Sculpture
May 6 – June 13, 2025
Reception: Tuesday, May 6th from 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Bookstein Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent sculpture by Hiroyuki Hamada. This is the artist’s sixth show with the gallery.
“I don’t really consider myself a ‘creator’ in a strict sense. It’s more like finding the work by letting things happen, struggling through trials and errors, or simply by accidents. It’s humbling and reassuring at the same time. As if art is a path to encounter the mystery of the Universe itself: As if to show us a glimpse of life itself, which finds a home in the most adverse conditions: As if to liberate us from social imperatives which can bind us to a point of impossibility." - Hiroyuki Hamada, East Hampton, NY, 2025
Executed over the last five years, the sculptures in this exhibition are created from layers of plaster that are built-up then shaved down and built up again. The phenomenological volumes are largely biomorphic and most often an amalgamation of geometric solids that invite the viewer to walk around the works. Closer inspection reveals surfaces that show the marks of human labor – indented drill marks, inlayed resin and painted bands – and attest to the artists’ origins as a painter.
Hamada’s work often presents itself to the viewer in seemingly opposing dualities: archaic and futuristic, natural and industrial, austere and inviting. Indeed, the sculptures are as evocative as they are otherworldly, and yet, it is this seemingly polemic relationship that drives the artist’s practice. Hamada explains that within his studio he strives “to find fine balance in elements to see things being harmonized, opposing elements coexisting in meaningful ways, richness and warmth being born out of raw materials.”
Hiroyuki Hamada was born in 1968 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to the United States at the age of 18. Hamada studied at West Liberty State College, WV before receiving his MFA from the University of Maryland. He was the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2009 and 2017 and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998, and most recently, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2018. Recent institutional exhibitions include Hiroyuki Hamada at the Parrish Art Museum Road Show (2023), Hiroyuki Hamada: Recent Works at ‘T’ Space, Rhinebeck, NY (2020), Hiroyuki Hamada: Paintings at the Duck Creek Arts Center, East Hampton, NY (2019) and Hiroyuki Hamada: Sculptures and Prints at Guild Hall Center for Visual and Performing Arts, East Hampton, NY (2018). Hamada has been profiled in numerous publications including Tristan Manco’s Raw + Material = Art (Thames & Hudson). The artist lives and works in East Hampton, NY.
Hiroyuki Hamada: New Sculpture will be on view from May 6 – June 13, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, May 6th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. For additional information and/or visual materials, please contact the gallery at (212) 750-0949 or by email at info@booksteinprojects.com.