Mr. Hamada’s art is filled with things that look like other things. Then you blink, and suddenly they look just like themselves. Contemplative, illusory, and mutable, his imagery as well as his approach is plastic in nature. Beehives, throat lozenges, Life Savers, and torpedo silhouettes fill the studio, their surfaces variously pocked and dimpled, honed to a glossy sheen, or stacked into subcontinents that cleave to shared edges. Rubbing resins, wax, and pigment into smoothed and sanded layers of plaster, Mr. Hamada transforms basic construction materials into something swelling with spirit and consciousness. It feels as though a pulse might lurk beneath the finished surface of each object, instead of the structural foam, burlap, and plaster the artist claims are there.
