“I would like to act as the bridge between different countries, cultures and people.”
Pop ceramic curves in playful forms
En Iwamura makes pop ceramic characters with cartoonish humour and calm spirit. The Japanese philosophy of Ma is a key inspiration. This is a concept where relationships between objects, spaces and people are created – invoking tangible energy and feelings. As an example, Iwamura etches repeated lines into his clay figures. These recall the raked patterns found in Zen Buddhist gardens to evoke Ma. Like US contemporary Arlene Shechet, Iwamura experiments with ceramic patinas, shapes and scales. He hand-mixes glazes to provide unexpected modern colours and textures. By contrast, his watercolour...
Bio
En Iwamura (he/him) was born in 1988 in Kyoto, Japan, where he continues to live and work.
Early Years
When Iwamura was three years old, his artist father gave him stacks of paper and a pen. “Whatever you sketch,” he said, “we’ll put it on the wall.” So Iwamura drew around 30 or 40 pieces. It was his first solo exhibition – not bad for a child of three.
Education
Iwamura earned his first MFA at the Japanese Kanazawa College of Art and Crafts in 2013. He then relocated to the United States where he gained his second MFA in arts and ceramics from Clemson University.
