WAITINGROOM (Tokyo) is pleased to announce that Ryota Kito will hold his first solo exhibition at the gallery, and the first in his career, “Continuation of a Painting/re-reconstruct,” from December 14, 2024 (Sat) to January 19, 2025 (Sun). [The gallery will be closed for winter break from December 29 (Sun) through January 7, 2025 (Tue).] As an artist, Kito has focused on sculpture as the medium with the strongest sense of materiality as his chosen mode of production, while also exploring the notion of “sculpture created without the use of forms” in his work. In recent years, he has produced and exhibited works that use sound as a central material, such as The 82nd Portrait presented at the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibition (2024) and The Skeleton of M.81 – The 82nd Portrait presented at “ICC Annual 2024: A Very Close Distance” (2024). For this exhibition, his first solo show, Kito has created new works using sound as a central material, which is a continuation of his recent practice. How can music, which is often referred to as an art of the moment, be contained within a space? While considering this question as well as the notion of eternity, a grid-like sculpture designed to be repeatedly reassembled, sound sources that flow back and forth through this grid, and a work made of records as a physical recording medium (sculpture) will unfold within the space of the gallery as an installation.
“re-reconstruct” Main Visual Photo by Fumi Takata
Ryota Kito was born in Saitama, Japan in 1993 and received his MFA in sculpture from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2024. While producing sculpture in its original form of expression as part of his daily routine, he also creates works that use metaphysical materials such as time and sound as elements within a deconstructive mindset. Kito views himself as both a unique individual and an anonymous person, and uses himself as a starting point for researching phenomena and subjects in the universal domain of copies and originals. Recent exhibitions include “ICC Annual 2024: Faraway, so close” (2024, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo), “Sound＆City -environ-” (2024, HANEDA INNOVATION CITY, Tokyo), “72nd Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibitions” (2024, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo), “Rebuilding” (2023, some no sato OCHIAI Futaba-en / BaBaBa, Tokyo), “Shinjuku Dyeing × SDGs by Tokyo Fuji University – Shinjuku Re ‘Wa’ style project” (2022, Shinjuku Marui Honkan, Tokyo) .
Continuation of a Painting
There is a painting. It depicts a gate. This painting was made as an idea for a gate planned for a certain city. Later, the artist fell ill, and his proposal was never realized. The gate became an architectural illusion.
The painting eventually inspired a composer, and a song was born. 150 years later, I came across the song while riding the train. As the song unfolded, it seemed as if the magnificent architecture being built in my head had finally taken shape, only to fall apart.
I think about the continuation of their dream.
Ryota Kito (November 2024)
Photo by Fumi Takata
Ryota Kito considers himself “an individual among countless others.” He has been creating works based on themes he has picked up from his daily life and the environment that surrounds him, expressing the random, passing insights and sensations that occur to him in the form of questions on a universal scale.
The theme of this exhibition is “eternity and ephemerality.” As a motif, Kito has chosen the piano piece “Pictures at an Exhibition,” composed by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. Mussorgsky’s close friend Viktor Hartmann, a Russian architect and painter from St. Petersburg, submitted a drawing for the reconstruction of the Great Gate of Kiev, but Hartmann died young and the project to rebuild the gate was abandoned, which meant that the architecture in his drawing had become nothing more than an illusion. It is said that “Pictures at an Exhibition” was Mussorgsky’s attempt to realize through music the great dream of architecture that his close friend had failed to make a reality. When Kito first encountered this piece, he felt that “as the piece progressed, a magnificent architecture became built up in my mind, and I found myself overcome with emotion during the climax. As I listened to it over and over again, however, I began to feel a certain sadness when the finale arrived.” According to him, this is because the fictional architecture constructed by music, also known as the “art of the moment,” never materializes, and seems to vanish ephemerally with the end of the piece. For Kito, who creates works using sound as a material while exploring “sculpture created without the use of forms,” an encounter with “Pictures at an Exhibition” led him to investigate how this ephemerality, a dilemma particular to music as an art of the moment, could be made eternal. In the exhibition space, this architecture of sound, built and then broken, is replaced by a grid-like sculpture designed to be reassembled over and over again, while sound sources that flow back and forth through it are captured in this space with no end in sight. During the exhibition period, these sounds, which travel in two opposing directions, continue to collide with each other in the gallery, and are recorded on a daily basis and preserved in the form of 21 records (the same number of days as the exhibition period). Only time will tell whether Kito’s “sculpture as an act of endless capturing and containment” will be able to achieve a kind of eternity in this gallery space as a “waiting room.”
Photo by Fumi Takata
1993 Born in Saitama, Japan
2021 Tokyo University of the Arts, Bachelor’s degree, Department of Sculpture
2024 Tokyo University of The Arts, Master’s degree, Department of Sculpture
Currently lives and works in Tokyo
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
re-reconstruct, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
ICC Annual 2024: Faraway, so close, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo
exhibition of twi artists: ryota watashimizu (f/) ryota kito: Boléro -tem o mar num acorde final., Gallery zaroff, Tokyo
72nd Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibitions, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
Sound & City ~environ~, HANEDA INNOVATION CITY, Tokyo
2023
Rebuilding, some no sato OCHIAI Futaba-en / BaBaBa, Tokyo
2022
Shinjuku Dyeing × SDGs by Tokyo Fuji University – Shinjuku Re ‘Wa’ style project, Shinjuku Marui Honkan, Tokyo
2021
SDGs×ARTs, The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
The 7th Award winning exhibition of Heisei Geijyutu-Award for the students, Tokyo University of the Arts, Heisei Memorial Art Gallery, Tokyo
69th Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibitions, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
2020
Raw Objects, Kamisaka Art Gallery, Tokyo
AWARDS
2024 Tokyo University of The Arts, Department of Sculpture, the Purchased Works
2021 Salon du Printemps Prize
Heisei Art Prize
2020 Kume Prize
ARTIST WEBSITE
Left: “72nd Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibitions”
Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Photo by Yumeno Noda
Right:“Frame of M.81: Volar” (2024), Photo by Yumeno Noda
