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Messages of Hope and Friendship #5
13/05/2020

What am I doing? 
Iwasaki Takahiro, Artist


It’s mid-March, and I am at home in Japan waiting following lectures I have in London and Salford, cities located in a country that I call the hometown of my expression. The exhibitions scheduled for this year have all been cancelled or postponed. 


To kill the time while stuck at home waiting, and to help with my rehabilitation for a thumb injury, I bought my first ever games console and have been researching day and night. Only now have I gained the fresh insights from the way that the story progresses by scrolling horizontally like a scroll painting and the single viewpoint spatial recognition of the FPS (First Person Shooter) game, "007".


Just as with the advent of the plague and AIDs, during which society entered new phases, we must also unceasingly seek new social models.


 


IWASAKI Takahiro is a prominent contemporary sculptor based in Hiroshima. After finishing his Ph.D at the Hiroshima City University, he went on to study for his M.F.A at Edinburgh College of Art. His iconic series, Out of Disorder (2006) cemented his standing in the international contemporary art scene. Out of Disorder was a sculptural installation in which mundane, everyday objects such as a towels, toothbrushes and rolls of duct tape were presented sprouting delicate architectural miniatures Iwasaki sculpted from their fabric. More recently in 2017, his work Turned Upside Down, It’s a Forest was presented at the 57th Venice Art Biennale where he held a solo exhibition as a representative artist in the Japan Pavilion. The exhibition featured sculptures of Japanese structures reflected on themselves and was designed to encourage people to look at things from different vantage points set up for each piece. His works have been taken up by many international exhibitions including Yokohama Triennale (2011) and the 2013 Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan. His other recent solo exhibitions include "Takahiro Iwasaki Dust (10-10) and Moment (10-18)", Kurumaya Museum of Art, Tochigi, Japan (2015); "Takahiro IWASAKI Many a Muckle Makes a Mickle", Kurobe City Art Museum, Toyama, Japan and "In Focus", Aron Gallery, Asia Society, New York (2015).