ITO Takashi

Born 1956 in Fukuoka
Based in Fukuoka

Studied under video artist Matsumoto Toshio at the Kyushu Institute of Design. SPACY (1981), which he made while a student, is based on the methodology of the structural films that dominated the experimental film world until the 1970s yet it has a sense of speed akin to a roller coaster and a visual impact that directly affects the viewer’s physical senses, indicating a new way forward for the video scene in the 1980s and beyond. At the same time, with works like THUNDER (1982) that employ the time-lapse technique he also demonstrates an interest in a spiritual world that cannot be elucidated rationally. In recent works such as Amai Seikatsu (A Sweet Life, 2010) and Saigo no Tenshi (The Last Angel, 2014) he adds a new dimension to his filmmaking in which a horror movie-like sense of unease seems to be amplified to a peculiar degree.

His latest work, Three Women, is an ambitious work designed to be shown on multiple screens in a movie theater. Moving a step forward from the use of multiple screens as an expansion of cinema as exemplified by Abel Grace’s Napoléon (1927), it presents what is literally a conceptual expansion of cinema in the form of a filmic work experienced in a theater in which the 15-channel, surround-sound audio constructed by Araki Masamitsu and Ito’s visuals organically intertwine.