Konrad Fischer Gallery is pleased to announce Zon Ito's second solo exhibition, which focuses on four groups of works that variously explore the medium of drawing and the natural as well as temporal aspects associated with it.
Ito's fascination with the fragile relationship between man and nature is already evident in the title of the exhibition. Each work reflect the relationships between the man-made, pre-existing natural objects, and moments of the uncontrollable. Ito primarily uses traditional craft materials such as clay and textiles to create an interplay of intricate forms and colors.
Among the works on view are Ito's "Plant Dye Paintings," small-scale watercolors on paper whose brownish colors are produced by boiling a wide variety of plants in a specially conceived process.
Typical of the "Modeling Pictures/An Abstract Gathering" attached to the walls is the immediate and intuitive process of creation, due to the extremely short drying time of the clay. After applying the modeling clay, the artist must make decisions within a very short time for compositions that are reminiscent of Rorschach-like symmetries. Unconsciousness and coincidence flow into the works.
For his latest group of works, the „Net Drawings“, Ito uses the skill of net knotting he learned on a small Japanese fishing island. The artist dissolves the fascinating regularity and order of the colored nets by weaving in small sticks that function like disruptive elements. The process serves to remind the artist of how human behavior can be influenced by even the slightest forces of nature.
The fourth group of works, "Drawing on the Sand", shows new variations of his already known embroideries. A multitude of different colored yarns have been used here, embroidered both systematically and randomly onto a thin wool fabric. The result is a system of its own that links all the works together, the basic structure of which is refined in a second step in each case with small-scale drawings that are also embroidered.
Zon Ito, born in 1971 in Osaka, Japan, lives and works in Kyoto. He received his diploma from Kyoto City University of Arts in 1996. Zon Ito's work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the National Museum of Art, Osaka; Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2022); Museum of Modern Art, Hayama (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2009); and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2008). His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
