Naotaka Hiro (b. 1972, Osaka, Japan; lives and works in Los Angeles, California) explores the limits and unknowability of his own body through painting, drawing, sculpture, and video. His work emerges from the dual positions of actor and director, creator and viewer, subject and object. Hiro’s performative approach bears traces of the gestural experiments of Japan’s Gutai Art Association and the visceral corporeality of West Coast performance art, both of which he became familiar with during his studies in California. In 1997, Hiro received his BA from University of California, Los Angeles and received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2000.
Hiro’s work has recently been included in the 2025 Roppongi Crossing at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and the 2024 exhibition What It Becomes, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work has also been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Warehouse, Dallas, Texas; Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado; and Centre d’Art Contemporain, La Ferme du Buisson, France. Hiro has had numerous solo exhibitions at Bortolami, New York; Herald Street, London; The Box, Los Angeles; and Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, among others. He has received grants from the Art Matters Foundation and the Asian and Pacific Islander Artist Presenting Initiative.
His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; and many more.
Photo by Darcy Hemley-Casucci.