Iwa Exhibition

October 20, 2012 - November 10, 2012 at All Asia, 332 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139.
November 11, 2012 - November 30, 2012 at Brookline Lunch, 9 Brookline St, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Pieces by students who learn Japanese style paintings, which use natural mineral pigments.
“IWA” is the Japanese word for “ore”, or minerals.

The mineral pigments used in Japanese style paintings, consists of particles.
All of the students learn to paint with these very unique and traditional pigments.
But although they all use the same materials and techniques, and study the same field of art, you should find that each artist thinks very differently from one another.

We hope that you enjoy discovering these differences between the developing styles of the artists.
And with hope that these differences will eventually become a solid foundation of their work, we entitled this exhibit with the word for solid, beautiful ores.

Natsumi Otsuka
I am 20 years old, mainly studying Japanese style painting at Tokyo University of Arts.
My interests are in the fields of culture and the drawings of the Japanese kimono. So for this piece, I chose to draw goldfish, which often appears in kimono as a motif.
Goldfish have been loved by the Japanese people for a long period, as a symbol of beauty and coolness that graces the city.
Since colorful tropical fish have become common, goldfish no longer have a large presence, but there is a clear difference between those tropical fish and the goldfish. In terms of species, goldfish are completely artificial. Goldfish, which are beautifully created by breeding specific carps, eventually return to their original carp form after several generations, when released into a natural habitat.
Although they live according to the rules of nature, as an artificial species, goldfish cannot maintain their own beauty without the assistance of mankind.
I feel that it is this transiency that fascinates us.

When I draw a living thing, I seek to express their attitude towards life, and how they see their own way of living.
That is the same question we must ask ourselves.
It seems to me, that as manmade beings, goldfish are strongly linked with this question, and so I decided to choose them as motifs.
I will continue with my efforts. Thank you for reading.

Yosuke Saito

The world which I express is the quiet space which makes night consider and from which it rises in light. I am glad if you feel the world whose noise was lost and which was quietly made somewhere.
A clock and accessories are also made not only from picture but from woodwork.
I would like to extend a relation taking advantage of this exhibition.
Connection – I’m waiting!!

Fujiki Takako
I study Japanese painting at Tokyo University of the Arts.
I mainly draw a person’s picture.
Since I grew up in the town near marine, I like collecting shells from young time.
So I try to paint combining a shell with a person.
It is because there is both wonderful charms.
And while using matures such as a blot in the work process, I am going to express the ambiguous world like ”in a dream”.
I devote myself to my art from now on, and want to continue draw a picture.

Mademoiselle Anna
Though I'm majouring in the Japanese painting, I'm very interested in old girls' comics.
So I do my best to be an illustrator who can draw nostalgic but modern picturesand giveimpression to people.

MADEMOISELLE ANNA's homepage

Hiroki Hayashi
Natural, transparent, infinitely light, totally understandable and conceivable; therefore unnoticeable, easy to be overlooked, yet adaptive and flexible to change.
That is what beauty means to me. Beauty is nothing but the sheer exquisite balance.
I see the fictitiousness in the nature I follow. In that sensory gap emerges the aesthetic.
Art is what is called ostrananie, which occurs on the grounds of the quality and luxuriance of my own internal language in the process of the articulation of sense.
Which is to say, the conceptualization that judges the experience of recognition. However, if the conceptualization itself creates independently, it doesn't mean the same because the gap doesn't get created; the gap arises by itself.
Therefore, in my own way, I keep opening myself up to and observing the nature.

Mizutani
I am studying the Japanese painting at the university.
I am looking for the composition of the color and screen which anyone can regard as beautiful.
Beauty peculiar to Japan is also looked for simultaneously with it.

The person who looked at the pictures which I drew is wishing he becomes a comfortable feeling.

Yu Watanabe
The main motifs of my works is Nisemono (Imitation) like Kakibyoso (Trompeloeil), It makes using mineral pigments and glue on Japanese paper, wood and screens.
I want to expresses the distorted feeling, which is felt every day.
My work is search in order to conscious of mine attitude against various matters. I’m interested in traditional mounting of Japan like a screen and craftsman’s technology now.

Kosuke Nakane
Immutable biological fact that the world has to exist,touch about life and death,and is trying to express in his paintings by view of life and death.
Something to live,and that living? Where to go? Death and dying wish is what will happen after death? Reification of a bequest from the event suggests that dwell after death the corpse will and when it was alive.
I have hit the production point of view was born of repeated conflict in view of the raw expression through the death, on the basis of the idea.

Exhibited this "Figure Bon(盆) four days transportation ancestors" is one that is based on ancestor memorial rites handed down for the ancient Japanese customs.
And me to come to this world as soon riding horse "cucumber" spirits of their ancestors.
You are supposed to have the hope of a return to the other world as slowly riding cow "eggplant" because regret.
This painting is a work that drew on cedar panels visualize one of the events of ancient Japan, the four days of the summer.

For example enemy to understand the glue that want to express the wish of the organism(mainly animal) was mainly composed of collagen taken from the bone marrow and the leather of animals, the expression was still Japanese Art(picture glue) used willingly trying.
In addition to the above, in the present, are also based on Reiju（people living God） in Japanese mythology and customs handed down from ancient times in Japan from the thought it self is Japanese.