Hiroki Morinoue

Born in 1947, in Holualoa on the Island of Hawaii, Hiroki Morinoue received his BFA degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) in 1973. Traveling to Japan in 1976 through 1982, he studied sumi brush painting with Koh Ito Sensei and Japanese woodblock printmaking, Mokuhanga with Takashi Okubo Sensei.

Hiroki and Setsuko Morinoue established Studio 7 Fine Arts Gallery in November 1979, as the first and now longest standing contemporary art gallery in Hawaii. A humble space in a small village with a charmed history, the gallery holds an open-ended mission: to create and promote Contemporary Art.

For Hiroki the landscape of Hawaii, its light, rocks, skies, and water has deeply influenced his work alongside the aesthetic of Japanese arts, crafts and landscaped gardens, which is prevalent in his work. In all of Morinoue's work there is a compelling sense of place, curiosity and dialogue between the art and its viewer. He is a patient observer of nature, the rhythms of the ocean shoreline, the fluidity of lava flows, patterns of light on water, using symbols as suggestive messages and patterns from nature. He transcends these observations in various mediums, including watercolor, oil, acrylic and mix media paintings, monotypes, sculptures, photography, ceramics and Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock prints).

Hiroki Morinoue has shown widely in the United States and Japan. He has completed several major public art commissions, including projects at the Honolulu Public Library, and for the Hawaii Convention Center in 1996-97 where he executed a 90 foot mural titled Mauka, Makai. His work can also be viewed at Pahoa High School Library and First Hawaiian Bank.

Morinoue's work is represented in the collections of The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, The Honolulu Academy of Arts, The Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts, Neiman-Marcus in Honolulu & Chicago, Verizon Hawaii, Achenbach Foundation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The National Parks, Maryland, Ueno No Mori Museum, Tokyo, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA. and many private commissions and collections.

In 1996 he was designated a Living Treasure of Hawaii by the Honpa Hongawanji Mission.

He is a co-founder and a volunteer artistic curator of Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture, a non-profit organization that offers art education and cultural activities to enrich the lives of people and the community since 1994.

In 1997, Hiroki Morinoue was the exhibit designer for the The Kona Coffee Story: Along the Hawai'i Belt Road. It took two years with many artists and local farmers to put this Kona Coffee history together. This exhibit toured the Hawaiian Islands, Japanese American National Museum in LA & Japanese Cultural Center in Sâo Paulo, Brazil. This joint production of the Japanese American National Museum and the Kona Japanese Civic Association, with major Kona community support was awarded a Certificate of Commendation by the American Association for State and Local History.

In 2014, Hiroki as lead artist created a stage set collaborating with artists Margaret Shields, Lindsay Lander, Setsuko Morinoue and Miho Morinoue for a modern dance choreographer Uri Sands titled Hikari by TU Dance, Saint Paul, MN. This work was originally commissioned by the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts for the TU Dance 10th Anniversary Concert, May 10, 2014

In 2017, Hiroki assisted his wife Setsuko in organizing the third International Mokuhanga Conference 2017, IMC2017. IMC2017 was held in Honolulu at the University of Hawaii, Manoa with exhibitions, presentations and demonstrations. A weeklong satellite program of classes, lectures and exhibitions at Donkey Mill Art Center followed this on the island of Hawai’i

Hiroki's most recent project with Sharks Ink, "Brazilian Rainforest" , 2018 along with all his work with Shark’s Ink has been acquired by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA.

“Through time simple elements become syllables in compound expressions that evolve into complex systems of idea and form. The captured image proceeds, becoming an aspect of composition, then finally a module of pattern, a mark of history in an exposition of time, place and mind.
As our world grows smaller, cultures collide and common languages emerge, integrating gods, demons, archetypes, and icons. Under the best circumstances, a lingua franca evolves a universal language derived from the distinctive attributes and unique subtleties of diverse languages. Hiroki Morinoue is the architect of such a language.”

~ William Zimmer Gallery

SEARCH THE HAWAII STATE FOUNDATION FOR ARTS AND CULTURE’S ART IN PUBLIC PLACES COLLECTION ONLINE CATALOG

The Art in Public Places Collection can be viewed online and searched by artist name, artwork title, type of media, and more: Search the Art in Public Places Collection. You can also search the Public Art Archive or the Locate Public Art web app for permanently installed artworks in the collection, such as sculptures at public buildings.