Zero Higashida Japanese, b. 1996

Overview

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Zero Higashida graduated from the Nihon University College of Art in 1984 and later the Tokyo University of Music and Fine Art in 1986. He attended the Studio School of New York in 1988, and received the Hiroshima Scholarship shortly thereafter in 1992. His mother having survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Higashida makes a point of addressing the catastrophe as an event that has indelibly altered the course of human history. Higashida’s simple forms, both rough and gestural, suggest the massive and the infinitesimal at the same time. They reflect at once the beauty, elegance, and harmony of balance, and the suspension of the atom and its relation to the universe. Utilizing steel, stainless steel, stones, and pieces of wood indigenous to Hiroshima, his surfaces ache with ragged edges, and suture-like wounds slice the planes. Favoring a state of precarious equilibrium, he tends to balance his forms on beveled edges and sharp points. Although haunted by the spectre of the atomic bomb, Higashida’s art also embodies, according to art critic Gerard Haggerty, the Japanese notion of chiritori: the planet’s power to heal and restore itself; as well as iconographic suggestions of important and influential individuals in the arts.