Itou: "An unmanageable space" (Photo: qp)

This is a collection of works featuring the antique shop "itou" in Sakyo Ward, Kyoto City, its owner Shingo Ito, and his texts, focusing on the space, arrangements, objects, and fixtures within the shop.
By rearranging the fixtures and objects monthly, and constantly re-creating the shop's landscape, Ito has discovered "space" and "objects" as its constituent elements. This involves handling one-of-a-kind items, operating a shop, and dealing with the fluidity and limitations imposed by others. Aiming for a temporary "completion" at the intersection of consciousness and unconsciousness, this collection presents a concrete philosophy for approaching abstract spaces, born from daily explorations of layout and composition. Painter qp, whose 2024 publication "Kissaten no Mizu" (Water in a Cafe) was widely read, has been intermittently photographing the interior space of "itou" since 2020. This book includes these photos along with a dozen short essays that touch upon the seeds and sprouts of the owner's creativity. The square book design and layout, where images on the front and back of a page overlap, reflect the owner's interest in grids. The editing, which employs random pagination with a different page order for each copy, evokes the constantly changing yet mysteriously cohesive displays of "itou."
Moving between the specific individuality and symbolic nature of objects, and sometimes superimposing them, this book explores the creation of a constantly changing yet unchanging space and landscape. It is a new record of practices and experiments applicable to all forms of creation and shop design.