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March 25, 2005 > Arts & Entertainment > Hashimoto exhibit explores high skies

Hashimoto exhibit explores high skies

By Tina Hinojosa | Thresher staff

Artists often name their creations with multiple meanings in mind. Take the title of the new installation at the Rice Art Gallery, Superabundant Atmosphere. The word ‘atmosphere’ carries an implicit invitation, asking the viewer to interact with the installed work. ‘Atmosphere,’ however, can take two different meanings — a physical, invisible entity from which we are inseparable or a material, tangible aesthetic from which we are removed.

Jacob Hashimoto, a 32-year-old Los Angeles-based artist, prefers the latter. Hashimoto has suspended 9,000 small, elliptical kites from the ceiling of the Gallery, creating a dense canopy within the single-room space.

The kites appear weightless, with white silk stretched and glued across the front side of delicate bamboo frames. Suspended from spider-web-like threads of black nylon, the kites fluctuate overhead, responding to natural variations in air pressure and light. Small iron weights attached to the backs of some kites counteract the high-powered air conditioning that cools the gallery. Fortunately, the weights are hardly visible.

The permanent glass wall at the Rice Art Gallery is the only physical barrier that separates Superabundant Atmosphere from the intangible atmosphere of the outside world. The glass allows natural light to penetrate the constructed space. At dusk, the kites cluster in a dark mass, but at noon they shimmer in white light. In the evening, the fluorescent lights of the gallery project a breathtaking sea of shadows. Although this phenomenon distracts from the sculpture overhead, it adds a degree of visual intensity. In contrast, the natural light of a bright afternoon opens the space upward and outward. The kites create a surreal cloudscape, provoking the audience to consider the work’s materials and the relationship between the visitor, the constructed clouds and the outside atmosphere.

The exhibit is ultimately problematic because of the lack of interaction between the audience and Hashimoto’s constructed atmosphere. Visitors are not allowed to touch or even blow on the kites, and thus cannot become enveloped in the kites as a ‘superabundant atmosphere.’ Hashimoto’s work is so compelling that the visitor will inevitably wonder how it would have looked if he decided to submerge the entire space in a massive cloudscape. The interpretations of ‘atmosphere’ are infinite, but Hashimoto’s construction, while visually stunning, is one-dimensional. It boils down the meaning of ‘atmosphere’ into something singular and narrow, and hence reduces the piece’s profundity and creative agency.

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