NANZUKA UNDERGROUND is pleased to announce Sumiyo Ito's debut solo exhibition, child's play. The exhibition features an installation of ten new sculptural works.

Sumiyo Ito was born in 1982 in Nagano, Japan, and completed the graduate studies course in sculpture at Musashino Art University in 2009. An up and coming artist, she has attracted much attention since, receiving the grand prize for three-dimensional work at the 2010 Toyota Art Competition and at this year's 2011 Tokyo Wonder Wall.

Ito's works have deep ties to childhood memories and experience. Among the major themes in Ito's creative works are the innocent violence and free creativity we all possessed as children. Ito confesses, "When I was a child I wanted to see the insides of the dragonflies I caught, so I would often peel off their exoskeleton." That sort of experience is not out of the ordinary. Ito's works, magnifications of casually executed activities such as dissecting dolls and putting them back together to form new figures, are faithful to the fact that we as mankind have made progress due to that fundamental appetite known as curiosity.

The overarching theme for child's play is the childhood desire to conquer the "environment" and "scenario" through the unique childhood role-playing game in which children assign and enact household roles. Ito attempts to cast forms that express that innocent childhood appetite displayed while playing house to "make everything around me mine" and to "determine the casting of roles as I please."

Of the exhibition, Ito says: "The interest in and fear of death; the fear of and hope for life: the sculptures I make are bodies born out of wanting for that pleasure we get from controlling the cycle of Eros and Thanatos (at least the cycle that, in reality, we cannot manipulate)."

The opening reception will take place on November 19 starting at 18:00 and will be attended by the artist.