History
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1950
Born in Hitoyoshi City,Kumamoto
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1970
Going to the United States
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1974
Graduated from Aims College,Colorado
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1982
Solo Exhibition Japanese American Cultural and Comunity Center(Losangeles)
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1983
Returning home
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1984
Return to the United States
Solo Exhibition Mexico National Modern Art Museum(Mexico-city) -
1987
Solo Exhibition Sao paulo Art Museum(Brazil)
Returning home and creative activity in Japan
Awards
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1981
Japan Art Festival Outstanding performance award
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2000
Tagawa City Art Museum Outstanding performance award
Museum Collections
- Sao paulo Art Museum
- Mexico National Modern Art Museum(Mexico-city)
- Kumamoto Prefectural Art Museum
Public Collections
- Hospital Nipo-Brasileiro
- Bank of Nipo-Brasileiro
- ITA－CTA College of Science and Technology()Kumamoto Prefectual Office
- kumamoto City International Hause
In Search of Revelation
Through my five years in the U.S.A. as an art student, I learned the importance of finding my own, original visual language.
On my return to Japan, instead of paints, brushes or canvases I took up a method of burning fabrics or papers with fire in order to create my works.
Having a very strong visual sensitivity I am intrigued by works made in tactile media.
My working process is a repetition of burning fabrics or papers first, then putting out the fire with water, or throwing water over the materials to wet them and then setting them alight. In repeating these processes, there comes a moment when I feel a presence of something much bigger than myself.
Fire and water are as different as it's possible for two elements to be; they are the fundamental elements of the living power of great nature itself. I believe that fire purifies and lifts our minds and water tranquillises them. Because of the differences in their basic characters, sometimes they collide against each other very hard.
"Kami”, the word meaning God in Japanese, is said to derive its name from the combination of two words; "Ka" meaning "fire" and "mi", "water". In many traditional ceremonies in Japan, fire and water play important roles and this adds to belief in my process.
The main aim of my works is to uncover what I really want to see; I seek to discover unpredictable beauty while working.
This can be revealed in a split second so I have to make an instant judgement and allow my actions to go in the direction where my mind (the process and the materials) lead me.
Without this capricious discovery of feeling beauty, the whole process would result in just completing works, not in making art.
Iwata Kousuke
Sympathy Between the Modern and Primitive
Mr. Iwata’s work is made up of cloth, heated with the flame of a candle and layered over itself many times, like siding. The heated, wavelike pieces of cloth differ in appearance, depending on the intensity and the angle of the light. The subtlety of the stretched cloth’s raised textures invites shadows, shaping a variety of impressions.
In our country there are many outstanding ruins. The uneven surfaces large and small and gentle ups and downs of the stones found there strengthen the shapes and lines carved out by strong sunlight, changing in expression moment by moment. These subtle changes likely owe to the fact that the surface of the stones is not flat, that they possess delicate undulations. The sensibilities of our ancestors, who viewed stone as an extension of soil, and cloth as an extension of human skin, live on in the figures seen there.
Mr. Iwata’s work evokes the memory of days distant from us, through a process we could call primitive, at the same time undertaking challenges which are extremely contemporary. In addition, I would like to point out that though he works with very delicate materials such as cloth (and shadow), he is not carried away with emotion, and this is due to his interest in basic forms and his variety in repetition. That the impact of his work springs from the labor of straightforward repetition in his creative process is a fact we could also consider to be characteristic.
In Iwata’s transformed and reincarnated work, the clearer its shape, the more strongly we can feel the breath of the cloth.
Helen Escobedo, Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno