Works of Paper 1971-2001

The Evolving Language of Hiroki Morinoue\

     Art is the language of a people adapting to unique time and places.  Generation upon generation, we recreate our world views to accommodate the new ideas, technologies and environments that are the consequences of our accelerating cultural evolution.  The innovative mind offers modes byh which we might reconstruct what has been, to facilitate what might yet become.
     The images in this retrospective reflect the development of a cohesive aesthetic language in the context of disparate cultural influences.  Simple elements become syllables in compound expressions which evolve into complex systems of idea and form.  The pristine images of Morinoue's early works become elements in more sophisticated compositions.  The captured image becomes an aspect of composition, then finally, a module of pattern - a mark of history - in a complex exposition of time, place and mind.
     The Polynesian penchant for storytelling - the product of a culture whose icons radiated throughout the Pacific by canoe over thousands of years - animates a reductive abstraction of image, the signature of a minimalist Japanese aesthetic.  A polyglot fascination with meida, humor and the idiosyncratic reflects a European sensibility to centuries of classics; a narrative, at once the history of an individual artist and the ontogeny of a culture of his own device.
     As our world grows smaller, cultures colliede, and common languages emerge integrating duelling gods, demons, archetypes and icons.  Under the best circumstances, a Lingua Franca evolves - a universal language derived from the distinctive attributes and unique subtleties of diverse languages.  Hiroki Morinoue is the architect of such a language.
     Born in Kealakekua, Hiroki Morinoue now lives in nearby Holualoa, in the house that was once his parents'.  He and his wife, Setsuko, who is also an artist, have an art gallery, Studio 7 in that town.
     Though the landscape of Hawai'i - its rocks, skies, and water - has probably been his single most important influence, the spare aesthetic of Japanese art is also fully evident in his work.
     The Morinoues were instrumental in organizing the Holualoa Foundation for the Arts and Culture, a nonprofit association that offers educational and cultural activities for the community.