Hirotoshi Ito Creates Bizarre Stone Sculptures That Defy The Laws Of Physics
Gloria Hepburn
Jun 15, 2014
From the deepest realms of surreal and incredible artwork come these mind-bending stone sculptures by Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito. Using normal everyday stones and rocks, he creates strange, unsettling and humorous sculptures with his masterful hands that will make you stare.
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How It Started
From a riverbed in his neighborhood, Ito picks up small rocks and stones of various kinds that he later works with. The best part is, his sole purpose in creating these sculptures is to change our entire perception of stones being a cold, hard and unforgiving material. He portrays them as the kind of things that have some warmth, malleability and humor.
Optimizing The Originals
Although he ‘sculpts’ stones into different forms, Ito tries his best to make sure that the original shape of the stone is not just retained but also optimized. He does so by juxtaposing a stone’s raw, natural surface with the painstaking modifications he makes to them to give them life.
Finishing Touches
As a finishing touch to his creations, Ito adds an additional unrelated piece that perfects the illusion, like a sardine, a string or a set of teeth. His workmanship is nothing short of clever and masterful, and it is truly incredible that he can mould a material as unforgiving as stone.
Masonry Business
Hirotoshi Ito attends his family’s masonry business as a stonemason apart from making these sculptures, and that’s probably where he gets his inspiration from. Deftly working with stone, he transforms it into sculptures that look like anything but hard. Ito graduated from the Tokyo National Fine Arts University in 1982, and first dabbled in metal working.
Carving Creativity
As he carves and combines the stones with other materials, he makes them look like they’re thin skinned pouches, melting like butter, and even laughing faces. Expressing Ito’s sense of humor and a desire to pleasantly surprise the viewer, these sculptures are simply priceless.
