Yoshinori Hosoki's work suggests a distance between the artist and the objects around him.
As a child, he used to hide his secret things in his desk. Since then, he has designed a
giant desk he can enter through a drawer. He has embarked on a world tour, showing a model
of the bus station, closest to his home. Some of his models give one the illusion not to
be where one is. He has also filmed a little girl and displays the video on a large, open
umbrella. Adults and children do not see the world in the same way.




*
Les travaux de Yoshinori Hosoki evoquent une distance entre les objets et lui. Enfant, il
cachait ses secrets dans son bureau. Depuis, il a concu un bureau dans le tiroir duquel il
peut entrer. Il fait le tour du monde avec la maquette de l'arret de bus proche de chez lui.
Certaines de ses miniatures donnent l'illusion de ne pas etre exactement ou l'on se trouve.
Il a filme une petite fille, et projette la video sur un parapluie deploye. Les adultes et
les enfants ne voient pas le monde de la meme facon.




    

     
My one year in one day in 50 minutes
2004
video
video 50'





Ne me quitte pas
2003
photo installation
shooting summer 2001, tinsel garland, Christmas balls
77 x 37 x 30 cm





"Grotesqueness Behind a Laugh"
by Jun AOKI, Architect

My friend Hosoki and I mostly discuss mangas : 'Have you read that manga ?' ; 'This manga
was great...', etc. When we go for a walk together, our conversation quickly moves to the
universe of mangas. 
He likes Sensha YOSHIDA's mangas. Hosoki prefers those written before 'Utsuru'n desu' (1).
The one called 'Chôcho o toru' (2), for instance. To recount the story of a manga is a stupid
thing to do. 'Chôcho o toru' tells of an unreal ritual. It is about a game with two competitor
dogs, which have to catch the most agehachô (3) possible. It is not a game for a dog, that
just loves catching butterflies because he will go after any kind. So, the dog receives a training
based on mixing agehachô and electric butterflies from Borneo. These butterflies generate
electricity with the powder they are covered with (of course, this doesn't exist !). The heroin of
the manga trained her young dog fast but they lose the game. The referee is a Shinto priest.
He finds a foul: the winner urinated in his pants to attract agehachô with the smell of ammonia
(unreal !).


extract from Chôcho o toru, manga by Sensha YOSHIDA, 1992
I think that Hosoki likes Yoshida, that they share the same inclinations. Yoshida differs from
Jun Ishikawa (4), who builts his stories with real elements, changing only the point of view.
We know the structure of Ishikawa's stories. We can have good fun following the ups and
downs of his story and explain why we laugh. Each and every element of his stories is
unexpected. Yoshida seems to exist but his aim is to establish a grotesque world made up
of unfounded elements. The story is but an excuse to go forward. 
At the beginning of summer 2003, at ROOM AIR exhibition, in Taiwan, Hosoki presented a
flip board with dream cities flashing past. This kind of board is now disappearing, replaced
by a digital system. The noise produced by the flipboard each time triggered laughter that had
no relation either to the humour or the spirit. This laughter bore in fact the seal of the grotesque
that can be found in Yoshida's works. When looking at the real world in front of us, we can see,
although with a slight gap, the image of the possible world. We don't know why we laugh but
we do laugh, in a schizophrenic way. I believe that Hosoki refines his laughter to reach the
structural level.

  (1) "Utsuru'n desu" is Yoshida Sensha's most representative manga. 
  (2) "Chôcho o toru" means catch a butterfly.
  (3) agehachô means machaon. It is a black and yellow butterfly.
  (4) In Japan, Yoshida Sensha and Ishikawa Jun are generally considered to be intimate
        manga writers.






Rain
2002
video installation
video, umbrella
variable dimension





Bonbon dans la bouche
2004
sculpture
candy, resin, pigment, fluorescent pigment
48 x 44 x 76 cm


yoshinori hosoki - biography
other artists