Sohey IWATA – In Flow

OPENING RECEPTION ON THURSDAY, MAY 28, FROM 6 PM TO 9 PM, IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ARTIST.

This May, Galerie Taménaga is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in France by the Japanese artist Sohey Iwata, entitled In Flow. For this exhibition, the artist has created new works, including floral folding screens known in Japan as byōbu, as well as large-scale ink drawings in which he immerses us in a form of abstraction intimately connected to humanity and the spiritual world. Born in 1978 in Nagoya, the artist studied at the Kanazawa University of the Arts and graduated in 2002. He has pursued a highly active career and trained under the great master Reiichi Tuchiya. Having received numerous awards over recent decades, his work is regularly featured in institutional exhibitions. He currently lives and works in Tokyo. While he is already well established in Japan, the artist first exhibited in Paris in 2019 at Galerie Taménaga and now continues his dialogue with Europe through this new solo exhibition.
Iwata embodies a generation of artists who have reclaimed ancestral painting techniques in order to create a contemporary figurative art. The way he has reinvented the Nihonga movement echoes the artistic practices of Western painters inspired by the Baroque and the Renaissance. Although Iwata’s approach to painting remains decidedly free and modern, it is important to note that the artist is a member of the Nitten (Nihon Bijutsu Tenrankai), the most prestigious artistic organization in Japan, whose name may be translated as “The Japan Fine Arts Exhibition.”
Mineral, vegetal, and animal worlds coexist within Iwata’s work. This perpetual dialogue between realms underscores the artist’s pursuit of harmony, a central aspect of his aspirations. Convinced that the cycles of life connect all living beings, he has succeeded in giving a cosmic dimension to figurative compositions made up of familiar elements that rhythmically shape our daily lives.
The exhibition In Flow reveals a complete fusion between beings, gesture, artist, and artwork, forming a new entity whose power and harmony profoundly move and unsettle us.