GIFT

Hirako chose the title GIFT to emphasize the importance of shifting our values to reflect the unceasingly changing environment. For example, when we are gifted with beautiful flowers we display them proudly and give them water everyday to maintain their beauty. Yet once they’ve begun to wilt they’re discarded. Consider how we designate certain ancient trees as divine and enshrine them while selecting others for consumption based on our own experience of time and self-serving values. This concept is personified by the tree/man amalgams often found in his paintings. These characters embody the notion that sometime during development we all, regardless of race or gender, become professional judges, deciding “we need flowers because they make us happy” or “we don’t need weeds because they encumber the flowers.” These seemingly cute and funny characters represent the human ego itself. It says something when even beautiful flowers, strategically evolved to spread their seeds and flourish, are fated to be cut down in their prime and disposed of when they no longer please us.

At first glance Hirako’s paintings appear to depict impossible situations. Trees crawl freely around a living room, people’s heads have been replaced with trees, and day is indiscernible from night. What may seem like a dreamscape completely divorced from reality is in fact an extension of our world as Hirako sees it, with fact and fiction bridged by aspects underlying our relationship with nature. Through this use of allegory, we are encouraged to rethink our lopsided values concerning the environment.