Naotaka HiroWandering Field

Naotaka Hiro uses his body as an implement of making where he is both the subject and the object. The resulting works are deceptively alluring–full of intense color and pattern with both detail and overall structure that satisfies sustained attention. Less obvious perhaps is Hiro’s process, which entails arduous hours of painting or bodycasting, where, in a performative move, he pushes his body to its limits leaving evident the residue of movement and thought across surfaces. To make his paintings, for example, Hiro suspends canvas or wooden panels in his studio and places himself either beneath or within them for a timed work session during which he executes (to a greater or lesser degree) rules of markmaking that include tracing, reaching, or rubbing his body against the media. As the process unfolds, Hiro’s access to different parts of his body varies, so he must work between what he can see and what he must imagine. The experience requires intense mental energy that places the artist in an alternative or even meditative state. 

Hiro began his career as a filmmaker. In his early films, he worked alone, moving between the roles of actor and director. This relationship to the self as other through a change in position maintains a core place in Hiro’s practice. The title “Wandering Field” attempts to capture that sense of displacement and shifting subjectivity. “Between the body and its image, action and observation, making and revising, I move back and forth between these things rather than staying in one place. ‘Wandering’ came from that movement. ‘Field’ is the space where this movement takes place.” The exhibition brings together works across different media and different periods of Hiro’s practice, along with new works made for The Arts Club of Chicago.

The exhibition is curated by Arts Club Executive Director and Chief Curator Janine Mileaf.

Image:

Detail, Sandwaves, Internally, 2025
296” × 82”
Canvas, fabric dye, oil pastel, rope, and grommets
Image courtesy of Bortolami, New York. Photo by Guang Xu.

Naotaka Hiro: Born in Osaka in 1972. Lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Selected solo exhibitions include Others (Herald St, London, 2026), Of Two (Bortolami, New York, 2025), Two Worlds (The Box, Los Angeles, 2024), Limbs, Anatomy, Beautiful View (Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, 2024), and Subterranean & Wanderer (Brennan & Griffin, New York, 2019). Selected group exhibitions include Toronto Biennial of Art (Toronto, 2026), Roppongi Crossing 2025 (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2025), No Boundaries (The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2025), Painting Paintings (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025), What It Becomes (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2024), Seven Stations: Selections from MOCA’s Collection (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2020), In the Meanwhile… (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2020), 50+50: A Creative Century from Chouinard to CalArts (REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2020), and Made in L.A. 2018 (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles). His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, and The National Museum of Art, Osaka.