October 28-November 3, 2004

art

Time Capsules

Hiro Sakaguchi, The Sky Over Roof Tops (S. Philly) (2003), 72 inches by 72 inches, acrylic on canvas.

Vivid memories (and kindergarten techniques) inform the works of Hiro Sakaguchi.

by Susan Hagen

Hiro Sakaguchi is a painter with a deep connection to place. He was born in Nagano, grew up in Tokyo and has lived in Philadelphia since 1990, and the intersection of his memories and present life form the basis for his work. Imagination filters his autobiographical subjects and sorts them into sweet and sour layers of meaning.

This exhibition includes nine paintings and a group of 10 drawings, studies and doodles, all made in the past two years, which are inspired by sources as diverse as Japanese animation and American academic painting. Sakaguchi uses a variety of media—watercolor and graphite on paper, orange juice on paper, acrylic on canvas, watercolor on ivory or ivorine. Some of the paintings have a raw, unfinished look, as if life interrupted the process, but they are actually carefully developed over months of revisions. One painting, The Sky Over Roof Tops (S. Philly), 72 inches by 72 inches, reveals in meticulous detail Sakaguchi's former South Philly neighborhood. The scene of rooftops and electrical wires is topped with a luminous blue sky thick with hundreds of airplanes, like a school of fish. Airplanes are a recurrent image in Sakaguchi's work. He enjoyed making model planes as a child and now rediscovers this pleasure through painting. On another level, the painting offers a potent symbolism for post-9/11 life, and it's not surprising that while returning to the U.S. with the painting after his last trip to Japan, Sakaguchi was stopped and questioned by airport security officers.

In other paintings, Sakaguchi mixes imaginary features with ordinary subjects from life in a more subtle way. Her Laundry 2003, 30 inches by 20 inches, is a lovingly painted view of a pair of woman's underwear hanging on a drying rack. It's seen from below, and falling cherry blossom petals—a symbol of the passage of time and life's transitory pleasures—seem suspended in the thick, bright light of a skylight. In his handwritten exhibition notes, Sakaguchi writes: "My ex-wife's laundry, scenery of everyday life, I won't see any more." Wind, Flower and Farewell, 22 inches by 22 inches, shows a residential neighborhood with a giant ferry boat looming in the background, like an alien spaceship waiting to take us away. Yet, the scene is given an oddly festive tone by strips of colored confetti that seem to be swirling in a strong wind. Another painting, The Road to the Museum, 40 inches by 92 inches, is a scene in a drawing classroom with the infamous Rocky sculpture emerging victoriously from plaster casts in the center. Here Sakaguchi writes with bemusement and a bit of irony about the difficulties of an artistic career: "How many art students will continue making art? How many will be in museum? Rocky did not make museum either."

The show also includes three more intimate paintings from a new series. Each painting is less than 1 inch by 1 inch and is mounted (with the tiniest mats I have ever seen) in a little frame shaped like a cell phone or other hand-held electronic device. Sakaguchi was inspired by 18th-century miniatures painted on ivory in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which were originally given as mementos to loved ones. One, Memory of Pet Fish Saki, captures a smiling, spotted goldfish in the medium of warm orange juice on paper, a process that Sakaguchi remembers learning in kindergarten. Both Self-Portrait, showing the artist contemplating the world with a pair of magnifying lenses perched on his head, and Memory of Moto Niitsu, another expressive head, were painted in the traditional medium of watercolor on ivory and ivorine. I found myself thinking of this new series of paintings as portable memory capsules for a fast-paced, modern world.

Sakaguchi writes, in his artist's statement, of his desire to make art "relevant to my life experience as … an individual in this global society." He has succeeded in these compelling and bittersweet paintings.

HIRO SAKAGUCHI Through Nov. 13, Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, 709 Catharine St., 215-922-3456