Morimoto Ryoko

Born in Hyogo in 1993. Graduated from Tohoku University of Art and Design, majoring in sculpture in 2018. We are creating and presenting stone carvings based in Yamagata Prefecture. By composing the environment in which animals live in one form, it expresses the activities of life that are repeated every day

A girl breathing in the morning air in the vast hills, a bear waking up feeling the warmth of spring, and a walrus looking out at the ocean on ice floes.

Living things live in various places on Earth, adapting to nature's blessings and threats. Life maintains dynamic equilibrium as a large natural cycle in response to the surrounding environment and other species. I want various “living things” to exist in space, living in an equilibrium that can never be reversed even at this moment.

Stones are biologically inanimate, but their presence similar to living things can be felt due to their density, weight, and rounded shape due to rain, wind, and water flow.

For example, let's say there was a big stone in the forest. If that stone is shaped like a bear, people are amazed by fear and curiosity, thinking that it is a bear even for a moment. After that, for that person, that stone has a special meaning: a stone like a bear. Using the morphology of a living thing as a motif, I carve a stone evoking some kind of living thing in a way that nature takes a long time to shape the stone.