Cosmic Birds, 2023

Japanese artist Shun Ito began his career as a dancer. When he transitioned to visual art, he brought with him an understanding of body movement that animates his delicate clockwork sculptures made of metal and light. Shun Ito composes a flock of delicate kinetic sculptures—wire armatures, filament, and pinpoint LEDs—that circle in slow, orbital rhythms. Cosmic Birds (2023) hovers between model and constellation, a silent migration mapped in light. Each arm traces a precise arc; together, they suggest a night sky that has learned to fly indoors. The piece is intimate in scale and astronomical in feeling, turning engineering into choreography and motion into a soft astronomy of wonder.