A Cloud of Kites

Walking into Superabundant Atmosphere, Jacob Hashimoto’s installation at Rice Gallery, was like walking into a cloud. In one of his most striking works to date, the 32-year-old artist filled the gallery with thousands of tiny kites that hung in rows from the ceiling, creating the effect of a cumulus cloud hovering low in the gallery.

Hashimoto’s kites aren’t the sort of diamond-shaped ones you flew as a child. They’re tiny ellipses made from cream-colored silk stretched over a bamboo frame, drawn from the Japanese tradition of kite-making. Peering through the glass that covers the front wall of the gallery, visitors were struck by the sheer spectacle of the work. The neutral tones of the silk blended with the stone of the gallery floor and the white walls to create an ethereal environment.

Although Hashimoto has used kites in previous exhibitions, for the Rice Gallery installation, he chose the elegant elliptical forms because they occur in some of his favorite Japanese screen paintings as clouds moving from scene to scene, marking the passage of time. Hashimoto first used kites in his epic installation, Infinite Expanse of Sky, a 1998 project at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. “All my friends, my parents, me, everyone that I knew in the world, everybody, sat around and built 14,000 pieces, and that was a killer,” the artist revealed in an interview for the Superabundant Atmosphere exhibition catalog.

Diamond-shaped or hexagonal kites take Hashimoto about two minutes each to make by hand. But to create an elliptical kite, according to Hashimoto, takes about an hour and involves soaking and shaping the bamboo frame. Making the 9,000 kites required for his Rice Gallery installation would have taken Hashimoto more than four years, working 40 hours a week.

For the Rice Gallery kites, Hashimoto turned to China. Kites, like a lot of other innovations, originated in China. Some historians believe they date back 3,000 years and that the first kites, like Hashimoto’s, were made from silk and bamboo. Hashimoto found one of the largest Chinese manufacturers of dragon kites—the segmented bodies of which are created from tiny circular kites—and asked them if they could create an elliptical kite. To his relief, they could.

Hashimoto’s elegant and airy installation belies the labor-intensive efforts required to create it. The first step in achieving its phenomenal effects was to stretch parallel wires taut across the gallery ceiling. Each kite was hung from slender black threads tied to the wires. Rows of kites started low in the back of the room and slowly undulated upward like the underside of a cloud. Hanging 9,000 kites was an epic effort in itself, requiring at least 18,000 knots, each one tied by hand. The installation took five days and required six assistants. Then Hashimoto spent an extra day and a half tweaking things on his own.

The installation team worked 12-hour days, but curatorial assistant Katherine Kuster says that, in spite of the time crunch, Hashimoto sought to foster an air of relaxation. The installation team listened to a lot of Radiohead as well as books on tape, a staple in Hashimoto’s own studio. Based on past experience, Hashimoto believes that if the installation team is tense, it comes across in the work. The idea makes sense; it would be hard to realize this kind of subtle undulation if everyone is harried and trying to work as quickly as possible.

For the viewer, Superabundant Atmosphere was interactive in a delicate and quiet way. Entering the gallery, you were enveloped by the tranquil, otherworldly atmosphere. The thousands of tiny kites swayed in response to your movements, connecting you, the room, and the piece. Visitors walked behind it to view the thousands of threads unobscured by the kites; they blew on the kites, creating ripples through the work. The flightless kites seemed to levitate in the air of the gallery. With simple components and a lot of man-hours, Hashimoto managed to create an environment that felt effortlessly serene.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer