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Yasutake Iwana, "Things we've all broken"


March 6th - April 24th, 2021
taguchi fine art, tokyo








































Yasutake Iwana was born in 1987 in Mie prefecture. After his graduation from the painting course of Seian University of Art and Design in Kyoto in 2010, he stayed in Germany, studying at Art Academy in Duesseldorf as a guest student until 2012. He won the second prize at Art Award Tokyo in 2010, the first Mie TV Grand Prize in 2016, and the 19th Mie Prefecture Culture Award for New Artist in 2020. Currently living and working in his hometown, Shimagahara village in Mie. He has had a number of solo exhibitions at galleries in Osaka and Tokyo, and has had increasing opportunities to exhibit his works at museums, including "New-wave Artists in Mie" at Mie Prefectural Art Museum in 2015, "Aomori EARTH 2019" at Aomori Museum of Art in 2019, and "#StayMuseum" at Mie Prefectural Art Museum in 2020.

He is a founding representative of the art group, "Mitsunoki (tree with sap)" in Shimagahara village organized in 2013 and is leading various activities deeply rooted in its local history, climate and culture. Recently this group is really noticed as an example of Art-Collective and Localism in contemporary art. His paintings are created in this activity, of which motifs are the nature and the religion in the village. In many case he starts the work from concrete objects around him, they are, however, highly abstract and really sophisticated..

Iwana says that he wandered in the fields and mountains of his village under the request for voluntary restraint of movement due to the COVID-19 since last spring, and was absorbed in the contemplation of oblivion and death in the ruins of abandoned houses and gravestones with disappearing inscriptions. In this exhibition, his third solo show at taguchi fine art, installed are his new works painted in the middle of thinking about the disaster brought by excessive movement, about the world from depopulated region.


During the past year, when I couldn't go anywhere because of pandemic diseases all over the world, I started to walk like a ghost in the village where I live. The ruined houses that used to be there until recently had been destroyed in a matter of days, replaced by a gray, gravelly clearing. I thought I knew someone who had lived here, but now I couldn't remember. Near the temple in the forest, I came across round stones covered with moss and wild Buddhas with their faces fragmented. They must have been engraved with the name of someone who lived here, or the memory of a family member, but the years of depopulation have removed the traces by rain, wind, and machines. I decided to paint a picture of these remaining scenes.

Yasutake Iwana, February, 2021, in Shimagahara




*This show is realized by the cooperation with the co-representing gallery of the artist, MA2 Gallery, Tokyo.




checklist of the installation


1. Survivors, 2021,
oil on canvas, 100.0 x 80.3 cm

2. Graves of farmers, 2020,
oil on canvas, 45.5 x 38.0 cm

3. Miracle, 2021,
oil on canvas, 72.7 x 60.6 cm

4. Leaving people, 2020,
oil on canvas, 41.0 x 31.8 cm

5. Thomas Didymus, 2020,
oil on canvas, 53.0 x 45.5 cm

6. Sharing, 2021,
oil on canvas, 65.2 x 53.0 cm

7. Abandonment, 2021,
oil on canvas, 130.3 x 97.0 cm

8. Mine, 2020,
oil on canvas, 60.6 x 45.5 cm

9. Asunder, 2021,
oil on canvas, 53.0 x 45.5 cm

10. Dream, 2020,
oil on canvas, 72.7 x 53.0 cm

11. Someone's name, 2020,
oil on canvas, 72.7 x 60.6 cm

12. Mild storm, 2020,
oil on canvas, 53.0 x 45.5 cm

13. Ruined house, 2021,
oil on canvas, 72.7 x 60.6 cm

14. Memory, 2020,
oil on canvas, 45.5 x 38.0 cm

15. Sign on a bank, 2020,
oil on canvas, 53.0 x 45.5 cm

16. Fate, 2020,
oil on canvas, 53.0 x 45.5 cm