If you missed Hashimoto Contemporary’s Amuse-Bouche group show last spring, fret not. The miniature show is returning for the second year in a row, featuring twenty-one artists, including four returning artists: Mary Finlayson, Sara Hagale, Gabe Langholtz, and Andrew Watch. Some of the other participating artists also include Hashimoto Contemporary-represented artists Devra Fox and Seanna Hong.
The French phrase amuse-bouche translates to small, bite-sized morsels of food, which is the best way to describe these small-scale paintings and sculptures. The show’s smallest piece made by Deborah Kraft, titled Cathections (12), measures a whopping 2 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches, while the largest artworks are limited to 12 x 12 inches. In addition to the uncommon sizing choices, each artist has a distinct style that works well with their peers.
For instance, James Eddy and Andrew Watch guide the viewer through visually busy patterns and/or objects while playing with large, simple color shapes that use the picture plane to go up what feels vertical to give a sense of depth, almost flattening the foreground and background, rather than receding in the traditional sense.
Maggie Cowles has a slightly similar approach to this visual heaviness, with dinner table scenes filled with various plates of food with Odyssey-inspired backgrounds. In Cowles’ three drawings, each illustrates different settings Odysseus encounters on his journey home. Another artist who is making the dining table a subject is Ekaterina Deryugina. Although the table is sparse compared to Cowles’, it’s filled with dessert and coffee; the scene is complete with a dog that is iconically side-eyeing the viewer. Like the other work in this group show, it can best be described plainly as fun.
Now, Deryugina isn’t the only artist whose work focuses on dogs. Sara Hagale, one of the few sculpture artists in the show, created a trio of dogs. All three look away from the viewer, as if they’ve done something mischievous. The huge pupils, with an equal amount of white in each eye, in both Deryugina’s and Hagale’s dogs capture a similar likeness of dogs when they’re being recorded.
Catie Cook’s depiction of dogs, however, is a naturalistic, zoomed-in close-up of the animal. The paintings Persuasion and Blue Sapphire are two different colored eyes of the dog, while Compulsion focuses on its teeth. Cook’s body of work as a whole primarily includes three recurring animals, including dalmatians, deer, and ducks.
Amuse-bouche is nothing short of a feast for the eyes. Because of the show’s scale, it takes more time to really see all the pieces on display, which creates a greater appreciation for this show, worth viewing twice to appreciate the side-eyeing dog or the Charlie Brown that is curiously hidden, for instance, which is what makes this show so charming.
All photo credits go to Hashimoto Contemporary.
Amuse-Bouche at Hashimoto Contemporary: 54 Ludlow St., New York, NY 10002. Through September 5, 2026, Tuesday – Saturday, 10 AM – 6 PM.
Amuse-Bouche at Hashimoto Contemporary featuring Audrey Bialke @audreybialke, Gina M. Contreras @ginamcontreras, Catie Cook @catie_cook_art, Maggie Cowles @maggiemargaret_cowles, Ekaterina Deryugina @inspire_kati, James Eddy @_james_eddy, Mary Finlayson @painted_mary, Devra Fox @devrafox, Casey Gray @caseygraysf, Sara Hágale @shagey_, Barry Hazard @barryhazard, Seanna Hong @seonnahong, Jackson Joyce @jackson.e.joyce, Deborah Kraft @deborah.kraft, Danym Kwon @sleepy_danym, Gabe Langholtz @gabelangjoltzart, Paige Mehrer @paigemehrer, Opal Mae Ong @slapghost, Mike Ousley @mike_ousley_art, Zack Rosebrugh @zackrosebrugh, Holly Stapleton @_hollystapleton_, Andrew Watch @andwatch, and We Are Out of Office @weareoutofoffice.
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About the writer: Sara Aparicio is a Queens-based mixed-media artist and writer. She is currently studying for her BFA in Fine Arts at the Fashion Institute of Technology. There, she also contributes to FIT’s newspaper, W27, as both an editor and a writer. Occasionally, she dabbles in writing poems about what occurred in her life. Similarly, the subject of her artwork primarily focuses on creating accurate representations of her Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage, whilst also raising awareness of issues not spoken about through advocacy in the form of paintings, drawings, collages, and sometimes prints. Her poems and artwork have been published in both an edition of Forest Hills Community Building’s newspaper, The Orbit, and SUNY’s literary magazine, Gandy Dancer. Since 2023, her art has been showcased in Free Arts NYC’s annual Youth Showcase. Sara’s most recent exhibition was at a local show with A-VENT-SPACE. You can find more of her artwork on her Instagram page: @sara.aparicio.studio