In the past, we’ve written about artists who use paper to sculpt 3-D objects—from 18th-century-inspired hairpieces to typewriters—with a near-obsessive attention to detail. That’s not exactly Katsumi Hayakawa’s style. The Japanese-born, New York-based artist constructs densely layered sculptures that resemble, rather than replicate, overbuilt cityscapes.
Hayakawa erects boxes of varying heights along a grid, leaving voids in the volumes that create another level of complexity. Instead of reading as individual buildings, the structures form an abstract composition. "By keeping color to a minimum," Hayakawa writes in his artist’s statement, "I am presenting a series of works made by trial-and-error thinking about the picture’s composition and structure from different angles."
The result is one part papercraft, one part perspective drawing. Have a look-see for yourself in the above slideshow. Enjoy!