Tivoli 1

The title most likely refers to the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli outside Rome — the Italian Renaissance terraced garden whose water architecture has informed European landscape art since the seventeenth century — or possibly to Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens. In either reading, Tivoli 1 extends Ito's garden investigations beyond the Japanese tradition to a European subject. Drypoint's tonal range suits this subject differently than it suits raked gravel and pine: the medium can register the dark wet stone of fountain basins, the textured spray of jet water against shadow, the dense planting of cypresses and umbrella pines that organize the Villa d'Este's terraces. Where the Garden series approaches the contemplative reduction of karesansui through accumulated line, Tivoli 1 engages a horticultural tradition built on water performance and axial geometry — a different kind of designed landscape demanding a different distribution of mark and burr. As the first numbered plate, it likely opens an ongoing comparative engagement with European garden subjects, paralleling the Nuuksio and Metsä series in extending Ito's vocabulary outward from the immediate Japanese frame.