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The Pollock Gallery’s newest exhibition Hiroyuki Hamada features many of Hamada’s sculptural works executed over the last five years. The sculptures in this exhibition are created from layers of resin 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, inlaid 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. 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.

Hamada was born in 1968 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to the United States at the age of 18 where he studied at West Liberty State College, WV, before receiving his M.F.A. 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.

The Pollock Gallery’s newest exhibition Pleased to meet you / Hope you guess my name introduces new and visiting faculty from the Division of Art at the ÎÞÂëרÇø Meadows School of the Arts to our students and community, and presents examples of their creative research. 

Featured artists: Emily Budd, Dana Buzzee, Frederico Câmara, David Challier, Kerry Maguire, Martha Poggioli, and Daniel Rios Rodriguez

Underscored by her improvisational techniques and an overriding feeling of immediacy due to a cancer diagnosis, Julia Jalowiec (B.F.A. ’18) reveals a preoccupation with mortality and absence in her exhibition In a Rush. She transforms subjects into symbols of courage and stability. Her work, marked by motifs like helmets and goggles, reframes personal experiences of illness and disability into narratives of protection and triumph, embodying her refusal to be defined by limitations.

In Jalowiec’s art, improvisation is essential. Subjects begin from something familiar, then branch off suddenly toward other worlds. Mark-making is fast and unfussy; methods and materials are often spontaneous. Her cast of characters possess superhero attributes like confidence, strength, and vitality, leading to fairytale endings. These subjects and methods are not naive; rather, Jalowiec’s acute awareness of her mortality demanded urgency and transformation.

Yuko Nishikawa creates a fantastical environment with her colorful, tactile lively forms. With a hands-on exploratory approach. She makes paintings, lighting, mobiles and sculptures using a variety of mediums, reflecting her experiences in architecture restoration, interior and furniture design, crafts and engineering.

Growing up in the seaside town of Chigasaki just south of Tokyo, she now resides in New York City. She works in her Brooklyn studio which she named Forest: a place where things grow and things decay to nourish new lives, and where people can wonder and discover something new.

Artist Statement

I started working on Somniloquy by asking myself how I can make an environment where objects are communicating with one another. I created a relationship between the objects where some are talking while others are listening. I began with the eye-level mobiles by the entry to create a transitional space, just like a tearoom would cause guests to lower their bodies in the crawl entryway. 

The ceramic sculptures, like leg, eyes and bellies disrobed at the end of the night, respond to the mobiles’ friendly motions and colors and exist in the space of complete trust, resting. 

Aitor Lajarin-Encina (B.F.A. University of Basque Country, Bilbao; M.F.A. University of California, San Diego) is a Spanish an artist, educator and organizer currently living in Fort Collins, CO. He is the assistant professor of painting in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University, where he teaches painting, drawing and socially engaged art practice courses.

Lajarin-Encina’s Big Wave collection is a body of work that has an intense, immersive quality, and thick existential atmosphere, and draws the viewer into the various dreamy scenes where strange, odd, mysterious events and situations unfold and occur. They, like most of his paintings, are visual poems that invite viewers to dive into vignettes of existential suspense that aim to trigger philosophical ruminations about life, interpersonal relationships and relationships with the environment.

Learn more about the artist here: /meadows/areasofstudy/art/lectureseries.