Jacob Hashimoto
JACOB HASHIMOTO | ARTNET
24 NOVEMBER 2025 | EXHIBITION REVIEW
JACOB HASHIMOTO’S SCULPTURAL INSTALLATIONS ARE A RIOT OF COLOR AND FORM
In his eponymous solo at Miles McEnery Gallery, Hashimoto fractures the elements of painting in work that is both painterly and architectural.
In the work of Jacob Hashimoto, form and color collide and coalesce into endlessly inventive compositions. Working across sculpture, painting, and installation, and leveraging art history and craft traditions to create complex constructions that could best be described as glimpses into an alternate reality, one where the limits of perception and even physics are challenged.
At Miles McEnery Gallery in New York, Hashimoto is the subject of an eponymous solo featuring a new body of work that build on his explorations into reality and medium. Marking his third exhibition with the gallery, it is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with an essay by art critic and professor David Pagel.
The construction of Hashimoto’s new work recalls elements of past projects, featuring round, reinforced paper discs, each screen printed. Here, they are assembled within a stratum that extends into the third dimension. The combination results in something that could be equally described as akin to painting or sculpture—and presents a new, expanded perspective on each. Using the language of painting (surface, color, form), the discs can be read individually or as a collective whole, creating an oscillating viewing experience.
The discs meticulously arranged on protruding rods evoke a kind of experimental architecture model that can be moved through with the viewer’s eye. The installations require a constant reconciliation between the painterly and sculptural approaches. Teetering on the edge of chaos, Hashimoto painstakingly balances the formal qualities of his works, creating a visual language that confronts the nature of perception itself.
The Promise of Other Inventions (that worked better) (install), 2025, Acrylic, paper, bamboo, wood, and Dacron, 72 x 60 x 8 1/4 inches.
No, No My Friends, We Will Not (install), 2025, Acrylic, paper, bamboo, wood, and Dacron, 72 x 60 x 8 1/4 inches.
Both in the show at Miles McEnery Gallery and Hashimoto’s overarching practice, a modular approach to artmaking reveals a new landscape of creative and visual discovery, one unbounded by traditional conceptions of medium. Shape, color, material, and all the other element of the artist’s work can simultaneously operate both independently and as one.
In his text, Plagen writes, “to stand before any one of Hashimoto’s wall-mounted works and scan its multipart, multilayered surfaces is not to be lured into a complex web of myriad nooks-and-crannies so much as it is to be catapulted on a vertiginous, gravity-defying ride through a world of vivid, super-saturated colors and crisp, laser-sharp shapes, both of which are repeated in such a way that they allow you to see some patterns, defined, as patterns are, by repetition and regularity; to see what you imagine might be parts of other, larger patterns, infinite or otherwise; and to see something that might very well be chaos itself—a randomized mishmash of renegade shapes and colors, none settling into anything regular or repeated.”
“Jacob Hashimoto” is on view at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, through December 20, 2025.
