Every piece of Ito Hirotoshi’s sculpture invariably triggers a second look, and in that second look there is often a temptation to look for hidden meaning, and, in some cases, for something shadowy or dark. But the artist warns against thinking too hard or looking for too much:

“If my art makes people smile and start conversations about the pieces I am very happy. I know when people look at certain images, such as Edvard Munch’s painting, The Cry, for example, they wrinkle their brow. My pieces are intended to turn those wrinkles into laugh lines.”
While a work may be provocative, we must take the artist at his word or otherwise spoil the initial pleasure. Although paradoxes generally oppose common sense, they may yet be true. But Ito’s current body of work, most of which is based on familiar, everyday objects, seems to be several paradoxes deep.

Stones and zippers, separately, are not mysterious objects; most people have held a beach stone, and everyone has a jacket or a bag with a zipper, which for Ito is only a universally recognizable ‘gadget’. Not even the contents of his zippered stones are mysterious; shells and coins have both served as currency in human history.

What is astonishing about Ito Hirotoshi’s zippered stones is the remarkable skill he displays in perfectly inlaying the intricate construction of the zippers into these hard natural stones which he finds along the seashore. This skillful manipulation of materials is one of the paradoxes that drives his art. But his use of paradox does not end here.

He carves clothing--sweaters, scarves, T-shirts, handkerchiefs--with such meticulous attention to detail, and to the qualities of texture and softness, purposefully to make the urge to touch irresistible. And with that touch the hard, heavy nature of the marble or granite stone is a surprise. This manipulation of our senses--the sudden tactile confusing of a strong opposing visual perception--is the real tour de force of Ito’s talent as an artist and of the paradoxical nature of his art. Touching his casually folded sweater once is never enough proof that it is not, indeed, woven of soft strands of fiber. One MUST touch again, and again. Ito Hirotoshi knows how easily the eye erases the memory of the touch.
But in the folding of the sweater there is a hint of a narrative. Why is the sweater casually, and not neatly, folded? “I am always thinking about people using these ordinary things, such as selecting a sweater to wear to work or on a date.” The casual folds or wrinkles in the sweater are only a brief moment in one life. And here, another paradox: a momentary carelessness captured in stone forever.
However, there is one piece in this current exhibition of Ito’s work that is an inspired paradox, although it veers away from the paradoxical in the direction of the suprarational or supraliminal, the strength of which rests much more in narrative and in our willingness to suspend disbelief. Moving On is described by Ito as a symbol of the businessman who spends all day at his desk, the trousers wrinkled from hours of sitting, and the tired, well worn shoe represents the routine difficulties of daily life. This piece was originally part of a much larger installation of a stone gate, which for Ito represents the existence of another, parallel dimension of life into which the tired businessman can, and has, entered. We arrive the moment before the leg and shoe also vanish.
In addition to the tenderness Ito expresses in the way he transforms marble and granite into ordinary objects, there is also a subtle sense of monumentalism in the manner in which he captures fragile, insignificant moments in time. It is possible this sense of homage derives from his family tradition. He is the 5th generation head of a Japanese family of stone masons in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, who have traditionally specialized in marble and granite funerary monuments. However, in addition to continuing the family tradition in natural stone, in 1982 he graduated from Tokyo University of Fine Art, with a major in metal work, where he mastered man made materials also valued for their longevity.

Not unlike the grave markers of his family tradition, Ito’s individual works are like time capsules, each capturing a fleeting human moment. And here is yet another paradox: it is possible that such intimacy with the bereavement of others for so many years explains not only his poignancy, but also the easy sense of humor with which he approaches the subject matter of his art.

William Thrasher, in correspondence with Ito Hirotoshi. March, 2006
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