We’ve seen a lot of realistic and surreal artwork at artFido, but Hirotoshi Ito’s bizarre and mind-bending stone sculptures really threw us for a loop. In his masterful hands, common rocks become strange, unsettling and humorous creations that will make you look twice.

Surprisingly, it all starts in a riverbed in Ito’s neighborhood, where he picks up the small rocks he works with. Although most of us consider stone to be a cold, hard and unforgiving material, Ito says that he would like to show other its potential to express warmth and humor.

“Although I work with various kinds of stones,” explains the artist, “most of my work consists of optimizing a stone’s original shape.” Many of these optimizations consist of juxtaposing a stone’s raw, natural surface with the painstaking modifications he makes to them to give them life. The finishing touch in many of these also involves some sort of additional little piece that completes the illusion, like string or even a sardine can top.

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