Journey: Paintings by Shingo Honda
The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center
June 8 – September 25, 2007
Big Island artist Shingo Honda is a well known sculptor, printmaker,
and painter in Japan and the mainland. This exhibition titled Journey,
presents a series of paintings from the 1990s to his most recent
works on paper. A common thread running throughout his work is the
theme of change: “the constant change as the natural order
of life within the harmonious whole”, the artist has stated.
This interest in change as an integral part of nature may have initially
been sparked in Honda by childhood events when he was growing up
in Japan. In the winter he would linger near pools of water covered
with a thin, frozen layer and pick up the ice, shiny and beautiful,
reflecting the sunlight, but in a moment, it was gone. It had melted
in his hand. From Honda’s early conceptual installations to
his abstract paintings in the 1980s, it was the contrast between
permanence and the reality of impermanence that drove his work forward.
Honda has expressed this continual state of change by creating works
that simultaneously seem rational yet illogical. Forms overlap and
shift, resulting in works that elude an explicit meaning while maintaining
an air of familiarity.
Honda’s most recent works are mixed media on paper entitled
High Noon, influenced by his lush environment, off the
grid on the Big Island.
Born in Niigata, Japan, from 1964 to 1969 Honda attended Tama Fine
Arts University in Tokyo, where he studied painting. It was during
a visit to the United States that Honda saw an opportunity for personal
change, and chose to relocate to Los Angeles in the mid-80s. He
currently resides outside Hilo on the island of Hawai’i.
Honda has had solo exhibitions as well as participated in numerous group exhibitions. His work is part of public and private art collections around the world.
Exhibitions at First Hawaiian Center are organized by Associate Curator/Curator TCM at First Hawaiian Center, Allison Wong. Supported by First Hawaiian Bank.
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