24 Surreal Sculptures by Japanese Artist Tomohiro Inaba

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Artist Tomohiro Inaba #wooarts

I would like my creations to be “the sculptures that keep engaging with the viewers through their imagination”. This is because I consider one of the ways of art is to be instrumental in bringing the viewers “a fruitful time” to fantasize about something that eyes cannot see.

For this reason I always pursue figures that inspires people’s imagination. I leave “blanks” in my works in order to create sculptures that engage with the viewers through their imagination.
In addition, by capturing the moment of one figure transforming into another, the art works start to tell us stories that evoke the flux of time.

These wire sculptures by Tomohiro Inaba appear to be the 3D manifestation of an illustrator gone mad. Each sculpture appears to start off anatomically perfect, a delicate fawn nibbling in the grass or a sinister black skull resting on its chin, but each devolves into an impossibly complex tangle of steel wire that twists vertically into the sky like violent pencil scribbles. Definitely check out his website for an archive of work spanning back to 2003.

Tomohiro Inaba is a creative sculptor who produces eye-catching figures that look like they are disintegrating into thin air. The Japanese artist’s steel sculptures titled Promise of Our Star and Next to the World are particularly effective in the visual illusion. Each figure offers a duality that lies somewhere between solid sculpture and three dimensional scribbles.

In one piece, viewers are presented with a grazing fawn, while the other displays a leaping deer. Both creatures have solid footing on the ground but extend beyond that point into a chaotic entwinement of wires. Though the fawn is half-way through its disappearing act, the active deer seems to have only just begun its disintegration process. Using a dark iron base and topping it with a similar pattern of clear acrylic resin, Inaba heightens the visual effect of gradual disappearance.

Tomohiro Inaba is a young artist who finished his graduate studies in 2010. He is attracted to iron as a material among other reasons because it begins to rust and decay upon contact with air, practically the moment it is created. For some his two-dimensional work he has used heat-sensitive paper, a likewise ephemeral material.

Inaba often incorporates everyday objects into his work. His Straight Grass series consisted of household refuse exhibited in bespoke frames.

Though made from solid iron wire, many of his sculptures appear freely woven. Their foundation is an anatomically correct solid form but it shoots off in incredibly complex tangles of steel wire that manifest themselves like violent pencil scribbles. His work has been exhibited in Japan.

Tomohiro Inaba

CV:
Born 1984 in Tochigi.Japan
Education 2011 Bunsei Univers of Art, Doctoral course, Tochigi,Japan

Solo Exhibitions
2006 [Under same sky]Kilala Art Gallery, Tochigi, Japan
2009 [Tomohiro-Inaba 2003~2009works]Gallery in the Blue,Tocigi,Japan 2011 [A Study for A Possibility of ‘Blank’in theSculpturalExpression.] Doctoral dissertation announcement exhibition,Bunsei Univers of Art,Tochigi. Japan
Group Exhibitions
2006 [Seventh sense Exibition-vol.1] Gallery in the Blue, Tochigi, Japan
2009 [Seventh sense Exibition-vol.2] Gallery in the Blue, Tochigi, Japan
2010 [100degreesFahrenheit vol,2]CASHI°Tokyo ,Japan
[NewYear-general-invitation-plan Exhibition]Azabujyuban Gallery,Tokyo,Japan
[art-icle Awrd Exibition 3rd], Sato Museum of Art,Tokyo,Japan
2011[Seventh sense Exibition -vol.3] Gallery in the Blue,Tochigi,Japan
[Woods of an animal] Utsunomiya Art Museum, Tochig, Japan [matter]CASHI°,Tokyo ,Japan
[Naght-Gallery Projects-Vol.7]Nezumiana-Gallery, Tochigi, Japan
2012[sogno-yume~ EijiFtahara&The writers who bear the next generation]tha SatouMuseumof Art,Tokyo,Japan [Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale2012]Niigata,Japan
[For the forest]Daikanyama-Tsutaya,Tokyo,Japan
[Gallerist Meeting ×SOMEWHERE .Lifestyle of extraordinary ]Shibuya-Hikarie,Tokyo,Japan
[Animal art collaboration Exibition]Yokohama Municipal Kanazawa Zoo,Kanagawa,Japan 2013[Sukima no kanshyoku] Gallery in the Blue,Tochigi,Japan
[Naght-Gallery Projects-Vol.9]Nezumiana-Gallery, Tochigi, Japan [Ikebukuro Montparnasse 2013]Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space,Tokyo,Japan [R293 Art Exibition 2013]Sano Municipal Cultural Center,Tochigi,Japan
2014 [R293 Art Exibition 2014]Sano Municipal Cultural Center,Tochigi,Japan [Current art in UtsunomiyaVol.4]Utsunomiya Art Museum, Tochig, Japan [Tokyo Designers Week 2014 in Milano Tokyo Imagine]Milano,Italy [Shitamachi Art Zoo]FUMA Contemporary Tokyo/BUNKYO ART
Team Project
●Gassa9
2007 [bird water] 2007[crowsed] 2008[gassa9 in Yumiko Ibaraki presents‘ten’Live painting]Tokyo,Japan 2008 [gassa9Presents DaikiEndou×TomohiroInaba‘Fusion’]wonder Festival2008 ,Japan
●Space- project
2007 [bird music] Planet Tochigi,Japan
Public Collections
2011 [Visible Tales]NoumanTemple Kindergarten,Tochigi Japan
Selected Awards
2005 Bunsei university of art Graduate Works:[Sculpture] Grand prize
2006 Montreal international Art Festival : Quebec Japan culture promotion prize 2008 Tochigi Art Festival : [Sculpture] Grand prize