To look at Makoto Ito’s sculptures is an act of exploration in itself. It is, perhaps, akin to recalling a shape glimpsed in a dream, as if to rekindle and trace one’s memory.

Some of Ito’s sculptures consist of lines drawn on the surfaces, resembling a three-dimensional drawing or development. Such graphics are visually three-dimensional. Yet, unlike a painting, in which a spatial illusion unfolds on a flat surface, in Ito’s works, precisely because they are sculptures, lines exist on three-dimensional volumes. The lines intrude/encroach on the sculptural masses, while the lines and masses repel each other in logical opposition. Multiple phases are reciprocated, with their placement constantly shifting. One encounters the shapes of the sculptures amidst a jumble of visual experience, where the shapes betray themselves.

Thus, no matter how close one stands, one cannot obtain a full view of the sculptures. Near and far, and the two dimensions and three dimensions, become entangled, and past time intrudes upon what one is seeing at the moment (all of this resembling a dream). Shapes are constantly remade. And this very act gives birth to the shapes. If so, then shapes materialize only through the interplay of different phases—reciprocation, encroachment, transference, inversion, discrepancy, and displacement. Hence, the distinction between a plane and volume, and drawing and sculpture, is rendered void. To create a sculpture is to present in front of the viewer’s eyes such a place that exists nowhere.

Ryo Sawayama (Art Critic)

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Makoto ITO
Ito’s formal yet light-hearted and humorous sculptural works created using diverse materials embody the possibilities of contemporary sculpture.
Born 1955 in Aichi, Japan. Ito received his MFA from Musashino Art University. Recent shows include Setouchi Triennale 2025 (group, Kagawa, 2025), Patterns and Distance (group, Maki Fine Arts, 2024), Solo Show (Galleria Finarte, 2024), Collector’s Eye (goup, Toyohashi City Museum of Art & History, 2024), Group Show (Maki Fine Arts, 2023-24), DOMANI: The Art of Tomorrow (group, The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2022-23), heliotrope (group, SHOUONJI, Tokyo, 2022), Omni-Sculptures -The Scene of Emergence- (group, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, 2021).
His works have been added to collections at Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Chiba City Museum of Arts, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.