Katsumi Hayakawa

In his paintings and cut-paper sculptures, Katsumi Hayakawa evokes the city and urban planning. He builds meticulously constructed objects with cubes and squares, suggesting skyscrapers and city grids, while the interaction of line and color coalesce with the cubes to create complex and vibrant rhythms. Hayakawa expands modernist explorations into the grid, in particular evoking Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. Hayakawa translates these energies to his acrylic paintings, which convey similar impulses and rhythms through simple gestures. These nonfigurative paintings defy the two-dimensionality of the canvas with trompe l’oeil renderings of planar space. He balances the rigidity of the grid with a freer approach to painting, and a lively use of color.