What are we looking at here? You might have some guesses, but they’ll almost certainly be wrong. To create the sculptural objects that we see in the photographs of Yosuke Bandai, the Japanese artist/collector goes out collecting waste and rubbish—manmade, organic and sometimes dead insects and bugs—found on the streets where they’ve been left to rot. For previous projects, he’s even foraged through illegal waste dumps in forests. Back at the studio, he reshapes them into things of beauty and photographs them on a flatbed scanner. This 2016 series is in homage to Venice’s Museo della Musica, where Bandai gathered materials to create unique object-centred portraits. It’s these interactions with the built environment that make Bandai’s work the perfect fit for this year’s Foto/Industria Biennale in Bologna—which explores the urban landscape and the Anthropocene—running across ten locations around the city until 24 November 2019.
