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Yoshihiko Ito "Frottageー In the Film"
PGI
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Artists
Yoshihiko Ito
After graduating from Tokyo College of Photography in 1977, Ito began his career as an artist and has since explored broad ideas about the intangible: including the forward flowing movements of time and consciousness.
Ito envisions these worlds in his series “imagery 72” a chronological sequence of half-size 35mm film strips presented in the form of a series of contact sheets. These contact sheets are given a creative function outside of their normal use as an index sheet of individually captured frames. The individual frames are made instead to complete one image in total. In the series, “MM” Ito’s subjects including small animals, dewdrops, leaves, and waves are repeated in a contact sheet in the fashion of fixed-point observation.
In the late 1990s, Ito took interest in emakimono (traditional Japanese painted scrolls) in which separate moments in time appear on the same plane of a scroll painting: a concept called iji-dōzu (variable time-single image). Ito’s series Patrone, which he sometimes calls photo-scroll paintings, combine multiple images taken from a fixed viewpoint. The images, printed in the darkroom, are then gently torn into fragmented strips, which Ito then reorganizes and patches together. As such, a single seamless image is created, in which flowing instances of time are contained.
Following the discontinuation of various gelatin silver paper products he had relied on, Ito decided in the early 2010s that he could no longer continue making photographic works. The decision propelled Ito to look for new expressive avenues. As a long-time devotee to film photography and the art of the darkroom, the vision of an unused stock of film in the studio, deprived of its purpose, became a trigger as well as a source of many reflections within. The familiarity he had acquired with sketching and storyboard techniques, formerly used as an aid to his photographic work, lent great inspiration and eventually led Ito to the frottagemethod. Ito began using film as a pictorial motif rather than a recording device by placing a layer of delicate paper over the physical film and creating rubbings and traces of their image. Historically, artists have used the unpredictability of the textures created byfrottage to their advantage. For Ito, however, the choice represents something other than textural qualities, but rather to give explicit shape to the expansive imagination stemming from an abiding fondness of the medium of film.
Starting with an outer edge created by rubbing the contours of an 8×10 inch sheet film onto paper, Ito adds layers upon layers of motifs traced off the physical forms of 35mm film, and by doing so creates unusual visions within the larger frame, while perforations of film, hourglass shapes, circular motifs, and spherical objects animate the picture space.
Like free-willed creatures, those visions move around gracefully within this world created on paper. The works are vivid, brimming with admiration for the film medium, and continue to unfold along with the artist’s imagination.
Ito envisions these worlds in his series “imagery 72” a chronological sequence of half-size 35mm film strips presented in the form of a series of contact sheets. These contact sheets are given a creative function outside of their normal use as an index sheet of individually captured frames. The individual frames are made instead to complete one image in total. In the series, “MM” Ito’s subjects including small animals, dewdrops, leaves, and waves are repeated in a contact sheet in the fashion of fixed-point observation.
In the late 1990s, Ito took interest in emakimono (traditional Japanese painted scrolls) in which separate moments in time appear on the same plane of a scroll painting: a concept called iji-dōzu (variable time-single image). Ito’s series Patrone, which he sometimes calls photo-scroll paintings, combine multiple images taken from a fixed viewpoint. The images, printed in the darkroom, are then gently torn into fragmented strips, which Ito then reorganizes and patches together. As such, a single seamless image is created, in which flowing instances of time are contained.
Following the discontinuation of various gelatin silver paper products he had relied on, Ito decided in the early 2010s that he could no longer continue making photographic works. The decision propelled Ito to look for new expressive avenues. As a long-time devotee to film photography and the art of the darkroom, the vision of an unused stock of film in the studio, deprived of its purpose, became a trigger as well as a source of many reflections within. The familiarity he had acquired with sketching and storyboard techniques, formerly used as an aid to his photographic work, lent great inspiration and eventually led Ito to the frottagemethod. Ito began using film as a pictorial motif rather than a recording device by placing a layer of delicate paper over the physical film and creating rubbings and traces of their image. Historically, artists have used the unpredictability of the textures created byfrottage to their advantage. For Ito, however, the choice represents something other than textural qualities, but rather to give explicit shape to the expansive imagination stemming from an abiding fondness of the medium of film.
Starting with an outer edge created by rubbing the contours of an 8×10 inch sheet film onto paper, Ito adds layers upon layers of motifs traced off the physical forms of 35mm film, and by doing so creates unusual visions within the larger frame, while perforations of film, hourglass shapes, circular motifs, and spherical objects animate the picture space.
Like free-willed creatures, those visions move around gracefully within this world created on paper. The works are vivid, brimming with admiration for the film medium, and continue to unfold along with the artist’s imagination.
Schedule | Mar 23 (Wed) 2022-Apr 28 (Thu) 2022 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://www.pgi.ac/en/exhibitions/6492/ | ||||
| Venue | PGI http://www.pgi.ac/index.php?lang=en | ||||
| Location | 3F TKB Bldg., 2-3-4 Higashi-azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0044 | ||||
| Access | 4 minute walk from the Nakanohashi exit of Akabanebashi Station on the Toei Oedo line, 8 minute walk from exit 6 at Azabu-juban Station on the Namboku or Toei Oedo line, 8 minute walk from exit 1 at Kamiyacho Station on the Hibiya line. | ||||
| Phone | 03-5114-7935 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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