Akikazu Iwamoto

Secret Candy: New Paintings

September 12 - October 12, 2013

A Secret Candy, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Untitled #33, 2008, colored pencil on paper, 65 × 72 in (164 × 182cm)

Installation view

A Courtship, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76x 61cm)

How To Make Twins, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

The Trophy, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Pray For Sunny, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Installation view

Untitled #32, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Unrequited Love, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in (183 x 153 cm)

The Water 2, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

The Old Man and the Wolf Man, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Blind Composer, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

The Water, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

The Hero, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Small Discovery, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in (183 x 153 cm)

Untitled #26, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Untitled #28, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Untitled 31, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Untitled #27, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Hostage, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches (76 x 61cm)

The Game, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Untitled #30, 2012, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 10 in (36 x 26 cm)

Return From Space, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 in (76 x 61cm)

Stux Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo show by Hiroshima born, Japanese artist Akikazu Iwamoto. Akikazu creates wildly imaginative, candy-colored paintings and drawings that offer confronting, amusing, and sometimes frightening revelations of our inflated inner desires in their most distilled state. 

 

Akikazu was orphaned at a young age, and raised by his grandmother in a house just one kilometer away from the Atomic Bomb Dome. The images and artifacts of the Bomb affected him greatly during his childhood. The main thrust for his artwork is a general deep-seated sense of wickedness that he believes to exists in every human psyche.

 

Akikazu cites Maurice Utrillo, an early 20th century painter of emotionally charged Parisian landscapes, as one of his notable inspirations. His works are also influenced by the ethereal colors he witnessed during a trip to Nepal as well as the works of American painter Aaron Johnson and Canadian Marcel Dzama. His visions take place in a comprehensive atmosphere free from the restrictions of reality, where violently mutated creatures, detached body parts and nondescript organic forms are rendered masterfully, contending an inherent connection between violence and innocence.

 

His vast portfolio of drawings further showcases his powerful imagination, and sheds light on his enigmatic compositional processes. Delicately rendered with pastels and colored pencils, these images offer spontaneous, experimental, stand-alone frames that, in their totality, form a panorama of his mental kingdom. They often emanate a sense of mystery that supplements the excitement and energy of his canvases. Their sketchbook-like quality inserts a reporter’s notebook-sensibility that makes these jarring, candid scenes from his psychological landscape simultaneously personable and haunting.

                                                                                                                                                - Lucy Li