In Art News

Without saying anything, Jason Hirata and Sol Hashemi lifted a thick
floorboard, propped it on a slab of white marble standing
upright like a headstone, and strapped a double long fluorescent to its
back that lit the underside. The historically hot Seattle night rolled
in through the new hole in the floor.

A quick forest of sculptures was added, involving a glistening,
honey-colored cylinder (it turned out to be a roll of heavy-duty
plastic wrap), a trunk of curled-up bamboo veneer, chunks of granite
counter­top sporting scrapbook-sticker drawings, and a hump of
shimmery lenticular plastic. Trapezoids hovering on white paper were painted in ink made from Hirata’s sweat; a white shape painted
thinly on a grid of photos presented itself like the ghost of an
overhead light. An Optigan—a machine that uses light to play
music—pumped out cha-cha. Then the house lights went out, and new
shapes appeared, made by lights installed strategically underneath the
ravaged old floor. Inside, a tiny flashlight set a tiny crystal on
fire.

All of these things might have happened during the opening of Hirata
and Hashemi’s art show Generally, incidentally, light at Dirty
Shed, a new venue that is, basically, a dirty shed. Because this
shed is in the backyard of the home of Eric Fredericksen and Betsey
Brock, who have other art jobs and full lives and cannot stand around
waiting for people to come into their backyard at night, Generally,
incidentally, light requires an appointment. The show you’ll
get won’t be the same one I got that hot night, or the one that
happened opening night last Friday. Your appointment (e-mail
solhashemi@gmail­.com) will generate a new incarnation.

Why you should care: Hirata and Hashemi are a force of smart newness
in Seattle art, individually and together. If you had to say what they
do, you’d say it’s a mix of photography, performance, and sculpture,
but that would still be incomplete. Hashemi showed a grid of
mysteriously alluring photographs from an unidentified special occasion
at the University of Washington BFA show this past spring; Hirata’s
LeWitt-derived photographs of plywood beams resting on each other and
on a wall represented shapes his friends built using his instructions.
They were the show’s standouts. Outside the show, they also got
attention: Firemen were called, and Hashemi was nearly arrested for a
sculpture involving a Jeep parked on campus with a fog machine
running inside.

Generally, incidentally, light has to happen at night. Hirata
and Hashemi have a whole nocturnal practice going; they wore
headlamps and performed in the windows of PUNCH Gallery at night in
March, and it began when they showed at a new UW photo-department
gallery that wasn’t outfitted with lights. I prefer to think of them as
they were on the night of the hottest day in Seattle history: driving
away from the sunset with a video camera pointed back, speeding
east into the dark.

This story has been updated since its original publication.