Scaling a Pyramid
Jonathan Latiano
May 9, 2026 - August 22, 2026
Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of Jonathan Latiano’s solo exhibition Scaling a Pyramid.
"Size is objective, but scale is subjective.
Scaling a Pyramid is a multidisciplinary project combining microphotography and installation sculpture to examine how we perceive volume, detail, and proportion. At its core is a simple but ambitious premise: construct a small sandcastle and photograph every grain of sand within it.
At the center of the installation, a sandcastle modeled after the Great Pyramid of Giza sits on a pedestal beneath a vitrine of matching form. Surrounding it are thousands of images, each isolating a single grain of sand from the structure. The relationship is exact: every grain contained within the pyramid appears on the wall, and every image on the wall corresponds to a grain within the pyramid. Together, they shift attention between the monumental and the microscopic, asking viewers to reconsider how scale is experienced.
The sand itself is coral sand; a regolith composed of fragments of both stone and marine life shaped over time through bioerosion. The grains are remnants of coral, shells, and other organisms broken down by the ocean’s constant movement. These particles function as a kind of archive, holding traces of life, death, and transformation across vast spans of time.
The pyramid serves as a parallel. Though vastly different in size, both the grains of sand and the Great Pyramid are artifacts shaped by accumulated forces. Each exists as a record of time, material, and process. Through this comparison, the work challenges fixed notions of scale and monumentality, revealing how even the smallest forms can carry immense weight and presence.
First presented at the Boston Sculptors Gallery and later at Chimaera Gallery in Philadelphia, Scaling a Pyramid is now in its third iteration at Hawthorn Contemporary. This exhibition also includes Latiano’s first book, Scaling a Pyramid, which documents the images and process behind the work, alongside a new series of large-scale charcoal drawings that further examine the granular detail of individual grains."
Jonathan Latiano received his BA in Studio Art from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 2006 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and London, and his work has been featured in local, national, and international publications.
Latiano’s practice explores how our relatively short lifespans shape the way we perceive time, and how the present informs our understanding of the past and projections of the future. His installations examine labor, impermanence, and fragility, often drawing on scientific fields such as geology, physics, and evolutionary biology as conceptual frameworks.
Latiano maintains his studio practice in Somerville, Massachusetts, is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, and serves as Director of the Studio Art Program at Merrimack College.
Staff Perspectives
Jiadyn Brink
When you walk into Jonathan Latiano’s Scaling a Pyramid, you enter a world where scale is challenged. Scaling a Pyramid is centered on one idea, take something microscopic and show how profound it can be. Latiano takes the overlooked parts of life and puts them center stage.
I think this show is best seen without prior knowledge to the goal. The moment you leave the room and read the artist's statement, there is a pause of realization. All of these complex shapes resembling shells, rocks, fossils, are actually the size of a grain of sand. You realize that microscopic life is much grander than we ever could have known. This show tugs at my heart, as I’m partial to identifying the mundane and showing its beauty. If you look closely at certain prints you can see the reflection of the light illuminating these grains, tiny halos and red glows. Some take a purply hue from the exposure of the camera, making them seem other worldly. My favorites are the grains holding other shells or smaller grains within them, or the ones that seem to glow under the camera's attention.
I love when art and science meet. When an artist can ask their pressing questions to those with answers and then take that knowledge and abstract it. I believe Latiano is a prime example of this. He’s so knowledgeable about each grain, their history, where they came from and how they formed. In his book, under the same title as the show, he goes through each grouping of grain, allowing the viewer to identify each grain with him. Scaling a Pyramid is a time capsule. Holding time in object. We are able to see the history of the ocean, of its life, in these microscopic shapes.
During installation, we spoke of our place in the universe. How small we are in the grand scheme, yet our lives feel so big. We hold so much impact on those around us. These small grains remind me of community, of those who matter most. How each of us is a grain of sand but together we form the ocean floor, or perhaps, a pyramid.
Alex Death
Scaling a Pyramid is a show that made me question the weight I carry with me and what I let have power over me.
There is a scale given to every grain of sand, the history and symbology that we bring to a painting focused on a microscopic photograph of a piece of coral aggregate. In conversations with those who have viewed the work, each person had excitement at finding a piece that recalls an image, contains a vibrant color, or offers some view that it was once a living thing. You can get lost tracing your eyes through the seemingly endless rows and columns, an overwhelming experience as the optical illusion of the grid bends the light to form dark circles at the intersections of empty space. While mystified by the photographs, you might miss the sculpture entirely.
Sitting under a plexiglass pyramid are all the grains of sand in a pile no more than 2 inches tall. The contradiction in scale, with most of the subjects of the photos being as big as the pyramid itself, offers the opportunity to reflect on what we view as larger than us, grains of sand as boulders to roll up a hill. The constant struggle of our own humanity, what we fight for and what we’re scared of, is so small in the grand scale of all things, yet so rich in our own unique perceptions.