Design steeped in culture

The most refreshing aspect of “Hawai‘i in Design” at the Honolulu Museum of Art is the absence of the sort of overt commentary — irony, sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek appropriation of souvenir kitsch — that’s broadcast in hipster clothing designs and local T-shirt culture. Instead, exhibition curator Healoha Johnston’s selection of works from 10 local designers reflects an attention to detail, craft and technical skill that is linked to the environments of this archipelago.

The practicality of design (even at its most fantastic, surreal or outrageous) is what makes it accessible: Though we might not all be able to relate to the abstract impressionism of contemporary installation art, we all sit, wear clothes, occupy space. In this show the T-shirt that sells the slang of local references, the wedding gown that honors indigenous bird life, and the chair inspired by the knotting and weaving of grasses, ti leaves and hala are all made from the same alloy of local and Native Hawaiian culture.

Generational diversity brings the elegant patterns of Mark Chai’s lamps together with Joseph Pa‘ahana’s hypnotic, alluring video installation featuring boiling digital symmetries and a mysterious female muse. Koa Johnson’s trio of gowns made of common plastics and fabrics connects royal Hawaiian lineages, endemic species and commentary on the irresponsibility of a life built around disposable goods.

All of these designers are actually high modernists who get there by reminding us how advanced the past really was. Which is more “modern,” the sleek koa surfboards of shaper CJ Kanuha or those that Eric Walden shapes from polyurethane foam and coats with resin? Which is more “deconstructed,” fins and sections specifically designed to carve South Shore breaks or the splendorous swirls of honey and caramel that were once an entire tree?

When mounted to gallery walls, both approaches to surfboard design become two-dimensional and almost as expressive as fellow board shaper and mixed-media artist Keith Tallett’s paintings executed on wood, with coloring and surfacing techniques borrowed from surfboard design and construction. Tallett’s “Flying Hawaiian” series marries the glossy lamination of modern board design to the repetitive geometries of truck-tire treads, which themselves evoke silhouettes of flower lei or the jagged rhythms of carved aumakua figures.

Fashion designer Sig Zane’s white-on-white “Rain From Clear Sky,” made from Gator Board (a type of heavy-duty foam board), is a similar abstraction of rich cultural ideas, reducing our sometimes miraculous weather to a large-scale repeating pattern of rain, consistent with kapa motifs, that could be found on an aloha shirt or as webpage wallpaper.

Zane’s pattern fills the wall above Iliahi Anthony’s woven table and two very different chairs, which draw on the materials and techniques known to her as a lifelong hula practitioner.

In a casual yet powerful statement, lettering artist Matthew Tapia relays the message “take it easy,” part of the deluge of slogans and shout-outs seen daily on rear windows, bumper stickers and T-shirts. In extruded and magnified hand lettering, topped off with a luxurious metallic finish, Tapia is speaking the same language as the T-shirts in the exhibition from Salvage Public, a menswear line whose slogans play off Waikiki surf slang.

The exhibition’s wall text refers to design as a response to the environment, one that is both natural and urban, evolved and designed. And it is always changing. Unlike other arts, design — from cars to forks to doorknobs — is inescapable, and therefore provides a way to track decisions that ultimately are cultural.

These 10 designers shed light on some of the ways we might think about how we live. Above all, they indicate the myriad possibilities of knowing and remembering that can emerge wherever we happen to be in the world.