Takashi HATTORI

Takashi Hattori was born in Tokyo in 1970. He lived in Jerusalem from April 2019 until June 2023, and is currently living in Marshall Islands. He began to work with soil and sand in 2017. He has been making artworks using soil and sand from Palestine and Israel while praying for peace and stability in the region.The soil embraces life and death, as all of us are born from the soil and return to the soil. The history of the place is soaked into the soil, not only the history of human beings, but also the history of the earth itself. He believes that the soil and sand gives his work the power and beauty that the soil itself has.

When he creates his works, he often divides the picture into multiple squares and rectangles. The world continues beautifully and seamlessly, but human perception is limited. This delimited quadrangle represents the limit of human recognition, and the continuous flow (soil) beyond the division represents a beautifully continuous world beyond human recognition.

The "maze" that often appears in his works suggests civilization. They represent artifacts constructed like ruins, and they also suggest various problems caused by human beings themselves. The problems fade away with time, but new problems emerge as long as human beings continue to exist.

The horizontal stripes he draws look like strata or ancient documents inscribed on clay tablets, suggesting the accumulation of history and whispers of prehistory.


■Solo Exhibition
August 1-31, 2021 “The memories of the soil” JCAT Gallery (Online)
December 1-31, 2021 “The soil whispers”JCAT Gallery (Online)
April 5-May 4,2022 “Castles made of sand” JCAT Gallery (Online)
September 23, 2022 "Open House Exhibition" Jerusalem
Decmeber 17,2022-February 17,2023 "Creation and Death" Beyt Naima Art, Jerusalem

■ Group Exhibition
March 26-April 4,2021 “GAIA–The Origin” M.A.D.S.Art Gallery (Milano,Italy)
December 1-31, 2021 “The Gift” JCAT Gallery (Online)
April 1-10, 2022 “Spring Exhibition” Gallery Kunitachi (Tokyo, Japan)
December 6-17, 2022 "Made in Japan" Galerie Mona Lisa (Paris, France)
March 04-July 14,2023 “Medicine and Art”Beyt Naima(Jerusalem)
June 21-July31, 2023 “The Gift” Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art (The old city of Jerusalem)
July 11-15, 2023 “LOVE Exhibition “ NOHO M55 Gallery (New York, USA)
April 19-24, 2024 “Palestinian Embroidery OBI & Dress exhibition” (Palette Gallery, Tokyo)

■Award
March 25, 2022 15th JCAT GALLERY Award
JCAT Online Exhibition 「The Gift 2021」
 

HATTORI has gone through the course of trial and error to see if he could incorporate the unique texture of sand in his paintings. Since 2019, he has resided in Jerusalem, where he has begun creating artworks in mixed media using sand from Palestine and Israel. The holy land of the world’s three major religions allows you to feel how thoughts and memories of various people have accumulated over the long history and are deeply engraved in the land of Jerusalem to this day.

 
 
 

The sands of Palestine and Israel are not finely grained powdery sands like those found in the Sahara Desert or the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. It is sometimes difficult to apply them on canvas as pigments. However, such difficulty creates a unique irregularity, a visual “catch,” and a unique painting surface where roughness and delicacy coexist. HATTORI's works are created in the dialogue with the sand.

The sands used in his works include those collected in Ramallah and Bethlehem in Palestine and desert areas in southern Israel. Various kinds of sands that come in different colors, particle sizes, and textures are applied on canvas according to their characteristics. He creates shapes and patterns by fixing sand on the canvas using acrylic mediums. The original colors of the sands remain on canvas in some cases, and acrylic paint is applied over the sand texture in others.

 

HATTORI‘s works have fossil-like textures created with sand, and their presences remind you of reminiscents of ruins and excavated items. Along with the beauty of withered objects and the beauty of decaying, HATTORI aims to express new forms of objects created by weathering and the hope they give rise to. He continues to create in the hope that overflowing problems in human society today will be overcome as time goes by.