Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Whilst, a solo exhibition by Detroit-based artist Pat Perry. Defined as “at the same time”, Whilst points to the overarching emotional theme of the exhibition, focused on capturing simultaneousness. The artist approached this by creating a constellation of works varying in style and subject. While only tangentially related, they collectively evoke the feeling of time passing and history unfolding while your everyday life carries on.

During the creation of this series, Perry continually turned back to the writings of William H. Glass, Susan Sontag, and Anne Carson. These texts, along with his daily routine, caused him to reflect on the existential conflict of acknowledging global strife while existing in the mundane and still finding wonder in small moments. Whilst is filled with playful vignettes that feel comforting in their familiarity while evoking an underlying sense of uncertainty. Roadside landscapes are framed in crayon colored borders, a camera viewfinder creates a floating cross over suburban homes, and paper shooting targets form a collage on a living room floor.

In We all came out to meet you, two nuns stand near the base of a pedestrian staircase, facing the viewer, with a cheerful crowd behind them. Perry remarks ”About three-quarters of the way through, the small figures in my pictures had started looking back towards the viewer, some of them waving. I realized those encounters with people in the distance in my paintings has been happening for years. Like they’re acknowledging whoever is passing by. I am still figuring out what that means. The encounters are as much the subject of the artwork as the depictions themselves”.