Coincidence and Sign

This artist’s book attempts to paraphrase the work of Haruka Hirai, a Berlin-based painter, into the format of a book. For her solo exhibitions in Amsterdam in 2021 and 2022, Hirai created collages to serve as motifs for her paintings. Using the collages and the exhibition venue as materials, this book investigates the spatiality of her paintings.

In her recent series “corner painting,” the artist created unique supports in the shape of a rectangle partly folded on the diagonal. The series was inspired by how the single plane of a page, when folded, joins (or has the possibility to join) a different plane while containing space. Typically a painting generates two spaces: the space where the painting is hung and the space depicted within the painting. Through the deformed support, Hirai introduces a third space, created between the back of a painting and the wall. This slight opening suggests that the elements separated on the canvas by the diagonal boundary are unexpectedly held within a single support, and that these elements could be transferred through the imagination to other sites. 

Such explorations in Hirai’s painting practice are returned to the realm of books in this publication. The embossed line on the cover symbolically elaborates on the diagonal boundary in her paintings, while the linear structure of the interior pages allows the collages to create rhythmic shifts on the surfaces they occupy. In addition, the exhibition venue appears in fragments, dissociated from its architectural integrity and reconfigured through formal manipulation, disrupting its continuity. Within the space of a book, each element almost settles into place but never arrives at stillness. Propelled by the motion of pages turning, the collages and the exhibition space continue to move from their separate and temporary places toward an imagined third location.

Pages: 56
Dimensions: 141 × 205 mm
Format: Softcover
Year: 2024
Editor: Kenta Kawagoe
Design: Kohsuke Hayashi
Publisher: Haruka Hirai