About
Yosuke Ito is a Tokyo-based artist and international exhibitor. He works in the intermedia art field, projectingimages onto a wide variety of available surfaces. Recently, he became interested in organizing renewablematerials, powered by solar cells, as a means of drawing attention to current global environmental issues. Aftermeeting with minimal-sound master Phill Niblock in 1998, Ito organized and was artistic director of theinternational exchange project Puddles, an artist-run platform that includes more than 15 organizationsbetween Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, and Japan.
In 2003-2004, Ito had a solo exhibition entitled "Release/Remaining," which traveled from Tokyo (Japan) to NewYork (USA) and Lier (Belgium). Visitors were encouraged to make paper airplanes and to throw them ontohorizontal nets of rubber strings that had been strung from wall to wall. Lights shone from the floor onto thewalls and through the nets, so that the shadows of the paper airplanes on the nets were projected onto thewalls. In this exhibition, the paper airplanes represented a means for communicating messages. Some of themslipped down from the nets, but the nets gradually filled up with the airplanes, symbolizing "a hope forcommunication." As the lights projected more and more airplanes onto the walls, a sense of actualcommunication began to unfold.
Since then, Ito's artistic subject matter has focused on environmental issues through lighting and projectedimages, especially focusing on their gathering and their dispersal. In 2006-2007, Ito showed "Reflected Landscape" and "Floating Landscapes" at 55 Mercer Gallery. The works used loops to symbolize a connection betweenshooting and projecting. While we normally take photographs the same way that a camera obscura creates image/perception through the eyes--then projects the images into a dark space to show them--Ito instead set severalhand mirrors between a projector and the walls to spread the reflected fragmented images, just as if the shot images were given back to the landscapes in situ.
In 2009, at M55 Art, Ito developed his ideas into a visual narrative. The dispersal of light, transferred to thecircular motion of propellers powered by solar cells, suggests the universal implications of current globalenvironmental issues.