Masakatsu Sashie :: Ambivalence | Jamie F. Adams :: End of Day

MASAKATSU SASHIE :: Ambivalence

In Masakatsu Sashie’s new exhibition Ambivalence, the remains of contemporary life are compressed into hovering, planet-like forms with dense accumulations of architecture, building materials, machinery, signage and discarded objects suspended above quiet landscapes. His paintings feel both futuristic and archaeological, as though we are witnessing our own civilization from a distant point in time. Nature persists, but often as a vast and silent presence surrounding these concentrated monuments to excess, emblems of human ingenuity that also bear the weight of consumption, and environmental consequence.

The exhibition’s title captures the tension at the heart of the work, where fascination meets unease, beauty coexists with ruin, technological ambition confronts ecological vulnerability. Sashie transforms the material evidence of civilization into speculative relics, asking us to consider what the present is already constructing for the future, and what may still emerge from what remains. Masakatsu Sashie was born in and currently resides in Kanazawa, Japan a city well known for rich traditional arts and crafts and a unique culture due to the city’s difficult geographical accessibility. Sashie received his MFA from the Kanazawa College of Art in 2000 and has exhibited throughout Asia and the United States. His work is included in private and corporate collections internationally. Sashie’s home, Kanazawa, Japan, known for its geographical inaccessibility, is a miniature, secluded version of the larger more populous cities in Japan. With a lifelong interest in model making and having grown up in a virtual diorama Sashie’s intricately detailed oil paintings depict a world where the common objects of modern industrialization take on often oppressive forms. These haunting vistas are often dominated by an orb, a substantial figure, made of an amalgam of the remnants of human existence. The contrast between the detail and complexity of the orb and the surrounding environment impresses upon the viewer the co-existence of small microcosms within the larger outer world. Without showing preference to either world, Masakatsu Sashie paints two opposite worlds as equals with the intent of drawing the viewer into the space and having them reflect on society and its values.

JAMIE F. ADAMS :: End of Day

In Jamie F. Adams new exhibition End of Day, the artist examines landscapes in which the organic and constructed worlds remain visibly entangled. Industrial structures, altered terrain, and signs of human intervention coexist with open skies, vegetation and changing light revealing environments that are neither entirely natural nor completely controlled. Rooted in personal observation and the places that surround him, Adams’ paintings remain closely connected to his present lived experience. The Willow series paintings are visual haiku on this theme of the natural and human built worlds encroaching on one another. Rather than imagining a remote or distant future, Adams finds its beginning within the environmental and industrial realities of the current moment. His landscapes explore how human systems reshape the space we inhabit, while nature continues to adapt, persist, and reclaim its presence. The title End of Day suggests both a particular quality of fading light and a broader moment of reckoning, a pause in which the consequence of progress become more clearly visible. Adams presents the landscape not as a passive backdrop, but a shifting terrain where nature and civilization continually coexist and redefine one another.