Thursday, September 29, 2011

Yutaka Sone

Yutaka Sone "Little Manhattan" (detail), 2007-09, via David Zwirner


Originally trained as an architect, Japanese artist Yutaka Sone has focused his inclination for obsessive detail on sculpture at his latest exhibition Island at David Zwirner.

The entire first room of the exhibit is devoted to a single white marble sculpture. With the help of photographic reproductions, helicopters, and Google Earth, Sone created “Little Manhattan.” Weighing in at two and a half tons, the scaled model includes every street, avenue, building, and bridge east to west. The jagged edges drop off and seem to melt like a curtain of wax.

In the next room, more marble sculptures mingle with banana trees made from steel framework and rattan, a natural plant fiber. He paints them a bright but true-to-life green that pops in a white room filled with white objects. In a series of more marble sculptures called “Light in between Trees,” Sone brings physicality to rays of light. He carves the rays in rounded cartoon proportions that add a pop art element to an otherwise classically informed work of realism.

In Island, Sone exposes the cultural ambiguity of such a landform by playing with the natural and architectural connotations of the word through contrasting forms of jungles and cities. Be sure to see more of his stunning pieces in this survey of selected works.


Yutaka Sone Island is on view at David Zwirner until October 29th.

No comments:

Post a Comment