Born in Osaka, Japan, Naotaka Hiro studied at CalArts and worked as an assistant to Paul McCarthy, the prolific Los Angeles-based artist. During the time he spent in art school and working for McCarthy, Hiro began connecting his mixed-media art practice to Gutai, a Japanese art movement that emerged in the newly democratic nation in the 1950s and prioritized process and performance. Hiro’s work is marked by a deep investigation into the self, resulting in sculptures and paintings that are both intensely personal and universally resonant. Hiro creates one sculpture a year cast from his own body, with the final forms revealing his self-limiting process. In A Hole in My Stomach, Hiro explores a play on words with his body, creating the shape of an “A” with his cast figure that has a void where his stomach would be. Unlike classical figural sculptures depicting muscular or fertile bodies, Hiro’s work shows us a more vulnerable and perhaps more relatable form of the human body.
Born in Osaka, Japan, Naotaka Hiro studied at CalArts and worked as an assistant to Paul McCarthy, the prolific Los Angeles-based artist. During the time he spent in art school and working for McCarthy, Hiro began connecting his mixed-media art practice to Gutai, a Japanese art movement that emerged in the newly democratic nation in the 1950s and prioritized process and performance. Hiro’s work is marked by a deep investigation into the self, resulting in sculptures and paintings that are both intensely personal and universally resonant. Hiro creates one sculpture a year cast from his own body, with the final forms revealing his self-limiting process. In A Hole in My Stomach, Hiro explores a play on words with his body, creating the shape of an “A” with his cast figure that has a void where his stomach would be. Unlike classical figural sculptures depicting muscular or fertile bodies, Hiro’s work shows us a more vulnerable and perhaps more relatable form of the human body.
Born in Osaka, Japan, Naotaka Hiro studied at CalArts and worked as an assistant to Paul McCarthy, the prolific Los Angeles-based artist. During the time he spent in art school and working for McCarthy, Hiro began connecting his mixed-media art practice to Gutai, a Japanese art movement that emerged in the newly democratic nation in the 1950s and prioritized process and performance. Hiro’s work is marked by a deep investigation into the self, resulting in sculptures and paintings that are both intensely personal and universally resonant. Hiro creates one sculpture a year cast from his own body, with the final forms revealing his self-limiting process. In A Hole in My Stomach, Hiro explores a play on words with his body, creating the shape of an “A” with his cast figure that has a void where his stomach would be. Unlike classical figural sculptures depicting muscular or fertile bodies, Hiro’s work shows us a more vulnerable and perhaps more relatable form of the human body.
