Hirotoshi ito

Art Brokerage: Hirotoshi Ito Japanese Artist: b. 1964. Hirotoshi Ito is a sculptor best known for his unsettling, darkly humorous works which masterfully transform solid stone into forms that appear to be soft, pliable, or even alive. His works fall into two main categories: Realistic sculptures carved from marble or granite that appear as the fabric of a shirt or a scarf, and phantasmagorical objects made from individual stones Ito finds along a local riverbank. He either alters the natural forms of these stones or embellishes them to fundamentally alter their character, creating the illusion that the stone is an entirely different material. A set of teeth give the the illusion of life in works such as Laughing Stone (2020), while in A Memory Of The Ocean (2018), the careful addition of a zipper and a filling of shells transform the stone into a soft pouch.