Juxtapoz Journal – Yuichi Hirako Finds a “New Dwelling” in Seoul


Gallery Baton is happy to announce New Dwelling, a solo exhibition of Yuichi Hirako, from fifth June to thirteenth July 2024 within the Hannam-dong area, Seoul. Hirako offers with the coexistence and interdependent relationship between nature and people by means of his authentic model of depiction, during which metaphors and symbols stand out. On this second solo exhibition with Gallery Baton, Hirako manifests his pursuits and specific topics in richer expression by organically combining portray with sculpture or set up and selectively making use of traits of various media.

Yuichi Hirako was born and spent his childhood in Okayama Prefecture of Japan, whose pure surroundings is excellent and fertile. Having acknowledged {that a} dense forest adjoining to his village performs a pivotal function in the entire native ecosystem each wildlife depends on, he may naturally take note of how city inexperienced areas and indoor crops had developed primarily to consolation folks psychologically whereas finding out for a BFA diploma in London. Addressing questions like “Are they destined to be implanted in artificial areas, be managed within the fundamental exercise of dwelling, and stop to exist one after the other?” his essential consciousness of how folks deal with nature grew into the elemental theme of his follow. His viewpoint is expounded to the philosophy of Deep ecology, which understands nature as a unified totality. Thus, by means of his extraordinary visible language, Hirako has persistently insisted that nature is an unbiased object that deserves respect and honest therapy fairly than being a goal to beat or dominate. If straightforwardly accusing of the damages to the surroundings and struggling of crops and animals is one legitimate agenda of latest eco-activism, he could be a supporter who reveals his ideas on this matter together with his aesthetic worth by taking probably the most benefit of artwork media in a postinstitutional and on the identical time reasonable method.

The hybrid character, not solely a central leitmotif however a foundation of his work, seems often in his follow; furthermore, different plant and animal figures together with canines and cats, nourish the advanced narrative and assemble the main points of the complete storyline multi-faceted from his core theme. The introduction of auxiliary characters is among the normal procedures present in the same visible subject—animation; as a result of they’re helpful in delivering the context of scenes and scale back the potential for monotonous plotlines that always happen in full-length movies and sequence. His narrative setup, during which they’re as well-protected as the principle characters are, implies Hirako’s sympathy in direction of nature and animals. As well as, his wood sculptures, taking a significant a part of the exhibition, are achieved by means of many trial and experiment steps since constructing a large-scale colony got here into his first plan; they affirm that the artist’s dedication to embodying what he has persistently noticed from inherent facets of organism has reached a extra mature part. Having their individualities in sizes and particulars, although they appear alike at a glimpse as they share materials properties, the sculptures simulate ‘the regional modification inside an equivalent group,’ which is a signature phenomenon of nature as a system.

The exhibition title, New Dwelling, is Hirako’s different reply concerning the perfect universe of the longer term that might fold in a while, as steered from the human standpoint. The perpetual adoption of objects paying homage to the previous century, like a drum, an acoustic guitar, and a flashlight, reminds us of a time once we valued dwelling in concord with nature and rising and creating inside restricted assets, emphasizing the accordance with the periodicity of the earth. An evident tendency of the present world, the place nature has change into a goal of maximum exploitation, is radical religion in scientific rationality and rhetoric. From this biased perspective, even when taking solely the looks of hybrid characters under consideration, the follow by Hirako appears surreal and uncanny sufficient. From such a degree, mockingly, Yuichi Hirako factors out and re-enlightens us with a witty however generally stern voice that we’re amid the current epoch when the historical past of tacit coexistence between nature and human beings maintained over quite a few years is under-estimated as irregular or regression.



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