Jason Hirata

Three artworks open the show. There are four in total.

4. The last artwork is called Komár and has the title of Listen. Like others, this artwork has both a name and a title, which are not confused in this case. Komár aka Listen is a button found on the intercom door buzzer. Names identify the spontaneity of a person while titles tend to describe a social position, rank, function, relation.

A buzzer is absolutely functional. It can talk, it can listen, it can let people in. Once inside, a buzzer also lets people out, or exposes them to the chance and hum of the street. Perhaps these functional contractions only amplify one’s remove, sort of like something from the past. It never really repeats, though you do get a feel for it eventually.

3. Two artworks cast shadows in the space and one artwork is a loan between venue and artist. Usually the borrower cannot write the terms of their loan, and here, if the debt is repaid, it becomes absurd material further imbued with an ownership that supports the self authorship of moi, the lender. It’s a record of the materiality of the show, both in the physical sense of the objects exhibited and in the relational sense of the nature of the invitation to exhibit. Its own end is a tragic reversal of logic and need; but that is not the only conclusion found or sought by this work.

1-2. The shadow artworks appear in two distinct forms, both a kind of recognition. One was a discovery: that a flame has a shadow. The other form, falls into an experience of saying something about yourself either being an observed observer or an observer observing. There is no need to choose, and having chosen, one’s choice is easily changed.

—Jason Hirata

Jason Hirata lives and works in Princeton, NJ. He was born in Seattle in 1986 and completed his degree at the University of Washington, where he has taught and exhibited. Hirata participated in The Whitney’s Independent Study Program in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include Fanta-MLN, Milan; 80WSE, New York; Svetlana, New York; and Kunstverein Nürnberg. His work has been shown at Artists Space, New York; Kai Matsumiya, New York; Fall River MoCA, Massachusetts; and Château Shatto, Los Angeles.