Visiting Yuichi Hirako’s studio
I was given the chance to visit the studio of the art practitioner Yuichi Hirako.
The timing of my visit was August 2020, during a heat wave across Japan. It’s a new studio (Tokyo) that had just been completed in July.
Yuichi Hirako is an art practitioner who presents paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and more, with the relationship between plants and humans as his theme.
Hirako paints works focusing on the relationship between plants and humans, picking up and creating from the ambiguous and interesting parts of their relationship.
Vases and pots appear frequently among the motifs because he focuses on the unique development by which they went from functional presences for growing plants to having artistic value, he says.
In the relationship between plants and people, one senses a perspective and questioning gaze toward how they’ve achieved a unique development from their original purpose, with the relationship becoming increasingly ambiguous.
Also, cats and dogs are relatively often-painted motifs.
Cats and dogs are animals that originally lived in nature and now live together with humans; he said he paints them as symbolic presences that go back and forth between the natural world and human society, crossing between them.
Partly because universal motifs centered on plants are depicted, Hirako’s works are supported by collectors and art professionals around the world.
Building on a career of staying in England for five years, including attending an art school in London, he has actively approached overseas galleries. A career that doesn’t stop such steps connects to his current position too.
The art materials Hirako uses are mainly acrylic paint.
Depending on the purpose, he uses three types of matte acrylic paint (School Gouache, Amsterdam, Holbein) differently, he says.
Using paints that suppress coloration and highly saturated paints, and sometimes mixing them, he controls color. Also, he uses two types of brushes—soft pig bristle and firm nylon—sometimes processing them by cutting the tips, using them differently according to his production intent.
Inside the studio, items full of playfulness were installed.
Amid the COVID situation from spring 2020, exhibition schedules seemed to have fluctuated greatly, but the schedule from autumn 2020 onward is extremely packed, with a wide variety of artist activities planned—solo exhibitions, art fairs, edition-figure projects, and more.
He recently announced a gallery transfer, and there’s anticipation that the scope of his activities will expand further.
He will surely continue to present many more works and delight us viewers going forward!
