Takahiro Yamamoto
and Andy Paiko
Hanging River
April 18 – June 1, 2019

HOLDING Contemporary presents exhibitions and programs by emerging and established visual artists across disciplines. Through a deliberate curatorial vision and a strategic business model, we position ourselves towards challenging the economical and social privilege of the art world.

Hanging River is an exhibition of new, collaborative work between Takahiro Yamamoto and Andy Paiko. Hanging River opens on Thursday, April 18 from 6 – 8 pm at HOLDING Contemporary, and runs through Saturday, June 1, 2019. A performance by Shao Way Wu will occur on Thursday, April 25 at 7 pm. Regular gallery hours are noon – 5 pm, Thursday through Saturday.

Featuring hand-sculpted glass works and live performance, Hanging River embraces cognitive dissonance. In contemporary American society, within the political turmoil and constant negotiation of identity politics, we find ourselves in a conflicted state between optimism and distrust. How do we reckon with the tension between a dystopian future and our shared humanity?

Hanging River walks us through the friction in our daily experiences through visceral invocations of these themes. The artists’ utilitarian form of everyday objects, such as flip-flops, stringed instruments, and tea cups, belie the precarity of their glass materiality.

Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland. He has produced original performances and visual artworks nationally and internationally. He is a graduate of Pacific Northwest College of Art in MFA in Visual Studies. He co-directs a performance company madhause with Ben Evans, and a part of Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim.

Glass artist Andy Paiko is known for ambitious, technical works which explore the metaphorical and symbolic tension of form versus function. His work has been featured in such national and international print publications as American Craft, Hi-Fructose, Make, Glass Art Quarterly, the Corning Museum’s New Glass Review, and is included in public museums and private collections worldwide. Some recent exhibitions include the Renwick Gallery of Decorative Art at the Smithsonian show 40 Under 40: Craft Futures, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston show Crafted: Objects in Flux. In 2015 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Paiko currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

This event was funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and with generous support from the MacDowell Colony, The Ford Family Foundation, Linfield Gallery, and Physical Education.

Photos by Mario Gallucci