Hino gallery is pleased to present “Garden” by Sachi Hasegawa from Monday, March 25th, 2024.

Sachi Hasegawa is a sculptor who has been working mainly with stone for over 15 years. Her first solo exhibition at the gallery was held in 2008, and the show was comprised of works that somehow capture the essence of things that casually exist in our daily lives, as seen from the artist's unique perspective, and executed on a life size scale.

In recent years, however, the artist's awareness has moved further outwards, and she states that her "interest has expanded from what is real, to what seems to exist in reality but cannot be touched, on the outside or even in the universe." The way she perceives her work and the space and dimensions that surround the pieces, suggests an acknowledgment of an increased, more ephemeral or cosmological kind of depth. When one of the works exhibited at her first solo exhibition in 2008 was displayed again in the exhibition 'Lay Line: Sculpture by Sachi Hasegawa' at the Hiratsuka Museum of Art nine years later, Hasegawa recalls that, "as soon as it was installed, the work fitted in perfectly and the space was completely transformed," and that "the impression of the work looked totally different.” This experience may also have played a role in her shift of awareness.

Hasegawa regards stones as beings of another dimension from the outset, and she has always been interested in things that cannot be touched: things that are invisible such as signs, energy and vibrations, since she started her career as an artist. However, it can be seen from recent works and through the artist's words that the scale and space perceived through these works is changing too, as infinitely as the universe, and expands to multiple dimensions.

Nevertheless, especially this time, what made Hasegawa more aware of such a perspective is, perhaps paradoxically, the events that are happening inside herself, and the physicality included in them. In her recent work, she says that she began to realise strongly that "reality is probably phenomenalised from what is happening inside me (including thoughts and feelings), and that my own body and my inner self, which relates to the physicality, was a sacred place and a universe." Therefore, her works created from that context are as mysterious as ever, but when you consider that they are made manifest by the physicality including thoughts, feelings and even the subconscious, they can hardly be explained in words. Perhaps, that is the artist herself and also the universe that contains her.

Hasegawa’s sculptures suggest that what we see and what exists materially can never present any sense of totality or completeness. The chiselled marks left on the surface of the stone sculptures show the precision and density of the process, as well as indicating the extent of the physical vibration generated between material and artist, which at the same time resonates and somehow spills over into and out of the work, suggesting a multi-dimensional world. To transform the mood or scenery of the place that is created when such works are installed - as the artist felt at the Hiratsuka City Museum of Art - is also one of the magical phenomena that Hasegawa's work brings.

This will be the artist's first solo exhibition at the gallery in about seven years, and Hasegawa says the exhibition will be a kind of revisiting of the starting point. It will feature approximately six new sculptures and a series of drawings. One of the works included is the first attempt for the artist at a large stone sculpture that combines glass. We hope you will come and enjoy the “Garden” that Sachi Hasegawa has created: it presents a rare occasion to go beyond limitations set by notions of time and space.

Image: Everything and I
2024, Black granite and glass, H87×W84×D45cm　Photography: Tadasu Yamamoto