In This Ever-Fragile Balance, Hashimoto returns to the circular format ‘kites’ he began working with at Durham Press that allow him to freely play with pattern and color in a modular format. These kites reference the bamboo and paper kites Hashimoto uses in his large-scale installation works, translating them into in a two-dimensional format as a series of uniquely patterned woodblocks with a delicate woodgrain framework. They hold kinetic energy while caught in place on the paper, defying what is possible in Hashimoto’s physically suspended installations while still maintaining the illusion of gravity. Kites which can now stand alone are still connected by strings, seeming to hold them together but which often become tangled as if the kites themselves have pulled them awry with their own entropy.

Kites float through space with semi-transparent inks which converge instead of collide, airy even in their most condensed moments. Their paths are met by bold rectangles of color that define each composition, compressing and extending space to create dramatically different weights in these component parts. Crowded bands of blues and yellows become top heavy, like a piston pushing down on the floating kites below. In another composition, thin lines delineate a space full of breathing room even if it is still filled with a complex rectangle structure. The Ever-Fragile Balance fluctuates between density and lightness to find the midpoint where, if but for a moment, both states can exist at once.