Mini-Ramp_Model_01

Concept

Yuya SAITO was born in Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from the University of Central Oklahoma in the United States, through his life across Japan and the United States, he presents the artwork on the theme of relation between human being and the city.

Taking the opportunity of skateboarding, which he started at the age of 14, Saito created works with the theme of "Relationship between cities and humans."By unraveling street sports from the perspective of "shape," Saito sets the "curved surface" itself as a new visual language. ​A city where people, things, and events are overcrowded and never repeat the same scenery is a space that contains chaos and fragility, where countless dramas occur and disappear at the same time.

In the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, he suffered from the tsunami, which gave him an opportunity to reconsider the relation between human being and the city from the perspective of "coexistence with natural disasters" “The confusion that arises because of overcrowding and the culture that has been cultivated because of overcrowding." I feel that the city that exists in this contradiction will be able to be the key to express human being as irrational and cultural creatures.

In addition to his series of works by a traditional technique “Curving Wood”, by crossing multiple projects, such as the digital works and collaborative works with city-related artists, he is trying to capture the present of the city that changes while crossing various territories.