Yuto Hasebe Solo Exhibition

Last year, I have been an Artist-in-Residence program in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. It’s very countryside place, population is small, there are many old wooden buildings and old style hot springs are also there. Because nature is so beautiful, you can meet wild animals such as fox, monkey, bear, boar and deer are living around forest and mountain. Especially, deer are respected as the god ‘s messenger by Japanese people, but in this time, they are also subject of extermination. That is because, deer increases too much and destroys our agriculture. I felt Japanese mysterious on this problem. And I got given deer’s antlers from a Japanese local hunter. My work “Deer Calling” is a handmade string instrument using deer’s antlers. I wanted to express Japanese culture and social problems with music and sculpture.

Yuto Hasebe was born in 1984 in Nagoya, Japan. He is an artist and designer who is interested in exploring handmade musical instrument and physical strings sound. He was honored with the People’s Choice Award Most Unusual Instrument from Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition 2014 (Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA). His works has been featured in exhibitions and performances including United States, Hong Kong, Poland, South Korea, Singapore and Japan.