yasutake iwana, animals' field

Yasutake Iwana, "Animals' Field"

March 22nd - April 26th, 2025
taguchi fine art, tokyo

Taguchi Fine Art is pleased to announce the fifth solo show by a Japanese painter, Yasutake Iwana during above period.

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.

On this occasion, installed are new paintings painted after his last solo show, based on the motif of stone Buddhist image or the image overlapping the nitrous smoke and mushroom clouds that are increasingly seen in war reports these days with fungi such as mushrooms and molds that are familiar in our daily life.

Statements by the artist

1. Two divine possessions

In 1892, Nao Deguchi a paper scrap picker in Tamba, Kyoto, had a "kami gakari (divine possession)" one day. Nao, who was illiterate, wrote a vast amount of God's words using an automatic writing device called a "brush tip".
"Today is a world of beasts, a world where the strong win and the devil is all around."
An old country woman who had been left behind by rapid modernization but survived, she became one of the influencers (gurus of a new religion) that were popular at the time.

Born in Sado, Niigata, Kijiro Kita began chanting the Lotus Sutra with his wife Suzuko in 1929. Suzuko also had a "divine possession". Kijiro passionately kept a diary of the words of the divine spirits and dreamscapes that were told to him through his wife. At that time, Japan was in the throes of a depression that followed the Great Kanto Earthquake, and young girls in rural villages were sold one after another. Kijiro became one of the influencers (social activists) who advocated "social reform".
The way some of the young men who were fascinated by him have chosen was to attack politicians and business people.

2. Garbage

In 2019, infections caused by new coronaviruses spread throughout the world.
People began wearing masks to protect themselves from the virus and social surveillance, making their faces more invisible.
The news counted the number of infected people on a daily basis, and in the countryside, rumors and suspicions of who had been infected and who had found the stranger were quietly intermingled.
I spent most of my time in my home village, walking through the quiet@neighborhoods and painting dozens of pictures. Then, I titled that one piece "AnimalsÕ Field".

In 2024, the world was in confusion and tensions were high in all lands due to dissatisfaction with the existing regimes and the myriad information spread by influencers, despite the ideals pursued over the years.
I got a job as a garbage picker at a fertilizer factory (industrial waste treatment facility) on the outskirts of the village.
It was a factory that converted the large amount of food waste that came from the city every day into organic fertilizer. I began to paint on the dust-covered walls. After dark, I returned to my studio in my soiled state and continued to paint again.

2025, Signs of spring after a cold wave, Yasutake Iwana