Reflection - Blue

Dillon + Lee is pleased to present “Reflection - Blue,” our first solo exhibition of Japanese artist Katsumi Hayakawa (b. 1970 Tochigi, Japan).

Hayakawa considers his grouping of painstakingkly hand-crafted paper sculptures as a play in the concepts of the solid and the void. Exploring ideas behind the urban landscape, in this exhibition, Hayakawa combines different materials such as paper with plastic as a metaphor of the natural and the artificial, the ancient and the modern.

These works are initially read as a whole - a pulsating arrangement of regular shapes and volume - then as an assemblage of individual components that make up the whole sculpture. Systems of patterns and motifs emerge from the collective.

Hayakawa’s non-representational sculptures are built up using cubes or squares that he pastes onto watercolor paper. The simple design and neatly arranged rows give the slight appearance of micro buildings, common features of Japan’s densely populated urban centers. The arbitrary, almost erratic, profusion of shapes jutting out from the surface forces the eyes to continually search in vain for a place to fix on — perhaps a metaphor for our information-overloaded lives.

Katsumi Hayakawa’s work have been widely exhibited in Asia, Europe, and in North America. His work is included in prestigious collections such as Louis Vuitton, The Royal Bank of Scotland, the US Embassy in Dubai, and others.