Hiroshi’s art is primarily minimalist, his influences are complex – Buddhism, Shintoism, Tao, Surrealism and French Structuralism. As a response to the passing of his brother, mortality and spirituality often appear in Hiroshi’s work.

At 16, he saw a Francis Bacon exhibtion and decided to become a painter. Hiroshi notes Francis Bacon and his brief exchange program in Mexico City, at the academy Frida Kahlo was connected with, as seminal to his urge to paint. The blend of indigo, collage and universal myths all collide in Hiroshi’s unique style. As with engaged contemporary artists from around the globe, Hiroshi addresses climate change in his work.

By his reduced spatiality, at first a white and indigo color palette disarms. As the art is more closely viewed, the world of Hiroshi opens up. We see helping hands depicted among clouds. Oversized raindrops fall on accepting bodies. Angels in the sky swirl in flocks or swarms. The balance of light and darkness is presented in blue and white angels holding up rainbows, alternately heavy with weary or content hearts. Often, his rainbows are also made of hearts.

The ocean is a spiritual destination where we find solitary floating figures or a steered boat that breaches the great divide, leaving the current living world behind.

Many works in this exhibition seem to beacon that a significant altering of nature is forthcoming. What was functional no longer works according to its intended purpose. Men carry containers, like boats, not vice versa. Clouds are caged and birds roam free from captivity. Feathery friends seem to be the one life form relishing the making of this reordered world.

Rain clouds inhabit homes and water is contained or retained in bathtubs. Figures sit bewildered on rooftops, where shelter is but a mere contemplation. Are we experiencing the preparations for the great realignment or is it already post displacement?

The visual artist as a keen observer of our changing world has not let us down. In Hiroshi’s work, we see the twig bearing a bird, signaling a new normality has been formed. The broken angel or a heavy heart that seemingly could no longer advance with us are somehow carried along and not left behind, never forgotten, now part of an elevated way of being.

Nature has the potential to heal in Hiroshi’s world, and though reality can be harsh, a resilient spirit soars with great endurance. Nature, as our global witness, has eyes. Nature is aware and stands with us. And when truth symbolically finds itself as a flame at the tip of a tongue, it is only then when our minds open as vast as our most cherished ‘Sky, Sea’….

HIROSHI TACHIBANA was born in 1967 in Kobe, Japan where he still lives. He has worked as a stevedore in the port of Kobe and as a worker on his brother's farm. Hiroshi has had 5 solo shows in Japan, Mexico, & Italy (1992-2019). He is a graduate of Kyoto College of Art, Kyoto, Japan (1988-1992), and studied in Mexico City at the Escuela National de Pintura y Grabado  “La Esmeralda” (1994-1996)