Takahiro Iwasaki

 

Takahiro Iwasaki
Born in Hiroshima, 1975. Lives and works in Hiroshima.

Takahiro Iwasaki creates delicate, ephemeral landscapes using everyday articles such as toothbrushes, towels, bookmarks, and duct tape. He makes visualizations of the realities we ordinarily overlook, while changing the distance from the subject and its scale, thereby undermining our fixed perceptions and changing our awareness.Towers made of towel, threads built on randomly stacked cloth, remind us of the pylons we see in the mountains, and cranes made of bookmarks on books give the illusion of a building site.
Another series of his, ‘Reflection Model’, consists of detailed three-dimensional wooden models of traditional Japanese architecture, which give the impression of being united with its reflection on water. The influence in creating such fragile sceneries comes from the devastation wreaked upon Hiroshima by the atomic bomb, a city where he still lives and works. His art in its mirror imagery alludes to the 180 degrees turn that the city made from a city at the center of a military operation into the City of Peace after its reconstruction – as such his work can also be interpreted as perceptions of time.

Iwasaki held solo exhibitions at Oyama City Kurumaya Museum of Art, Tochigi, Kurobe City Art Museum, Toyama, and the Asia Society in New York in 2015, and was selected to represent Japan at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.
In recent years, Iwasaki has participated in many exhibitions inside and outside Japan. The list includes Aichi Triennale 2019: Taming Y/Our Passion (Ito Residence, Aichi, 2019), Japan – Cuba Contemporary Art Exhibition: Going Away Closer (Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art, Havana, Cuba, 2018), Water and Land Niigata Art Festival 2018 (Bandaijima Multipurpose Plaza, Niigata, 2018), MAM Collection 005: Recycle and Build (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2017), Oku-Noto Triennale: SUZU 2017 (old Japanese House in Morikoshi, Ishikawa, 2017), Paradoxa: Arte Giapponese Oggi (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Udine, Italy, 2016), Nissan Art Award 2015 (BankART Studio NYK, Kanagawa, 2015), INVENTO – The Revolutions That Invented Us (OCA Museum, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2015), and We can make another future: Japanese art after 1989 (Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, 2015).
He won the New Artist Award of arts category of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2018.

 

Public Collection

Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France
National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Edinburgh Royal Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland
Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, Hong Kong
M+, Hong Kong
X Museum, Beijing, China
Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan
Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, Japan
Kawasaki City Museum, Kanagawa, Japan
The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, Japan
Nissan Art Collection, Kanagawa, Japan
Hiroshima City University, Hiroshima, Japan
Ryutaro Takahashi Collection
Taguchi Art Collection

 

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