Meet the Wacky, Whimsical, and Playful Sculptures of En Iwamura

Installation view from En Iwamura's "Mask" exhibition, held at Ross+Kramer in January 2025

Installation view of “En Iwamura: Mask,” at Ross+Kramer in New York, NY, held in January 2025.

When En Iwamura is in his studio and finally reaches a flow, time passes as quickly as the speed of light. That’s why he believes that spontaneity is at the heart of his practice, which primarily—but not only—revolves around ceramic sculptures. Over time, the Shigaraki-based artist has assembled a whimsical cast of sculpted characters, each bearing playful expressions, unexpected forms, and decadent textures.

“With paper, digital media, sand, wood, metal, and ceramics, I always try to understand how I can play and relate with them as an artist and a person who likes to make art,” Iwamura tells My Modern Met. “For me, the most important thing in the studio is whether I can enjoy or focus on what I do. When I can enjoy, my time at the studio feels fast.”

If his eccentric and charming aesthetic is any indication, Iwamura must enjoy his creative process more often than not. As viewers, encountering his work is equally delightful, where engaging with these objects for longer periods of time reveals all of their hidden grooves and rich gradients. There’s a timelessness to these details, one that almost feels ancient and preexisting. That quality is thanks in no small part to Iwamura’s straightforward visual language.

“I use the most basic and simple techniques with ceramics,” he admits. “I have no special tools or secret methods. I just do the same thing as ancient people. When I see my work for the first time from a distance, I start to think of these sculptures as unfamiliar artifacts made by an unknown person or culture.”

For Iwamura, sculpture emerges naturally and in the moment, arising from his movements as much as from his mind. Perhaps nothing encapsulates that better than his solo exhibition, Mask, at Ross+Kramer earlier this year, featuring dozens of strange yet alluring figures. These sculptures all possess a rare fluidity, betraying Iwamura’s spontaneous and lighthearted perspective.

“Since what I do is simple and ordinary, I can play with and create sculptures as I would a doodle,” the artist explains. “I usually don’t have a sketch or plan before jumping to clay. The shape appears in the process of building, starting with one line and expanding it until I recover the form.”

Ease and flexibility have always been important to Iwamura. After all, he says he was heavily influenced by his parents and their artist friends growing up, describing them as “funny” and “knowledgeable.”

“My siblings and I loved visiting galleries, museums, and my parent’s or their friends’s exhibitions,” Iwamura recalls. “For me, it was so natural to be inspired by them, all these cool artists.”

As for how Iwamura views his own work: “You can feel that my art is cute, scary, familiar, unfamiliar, fun, boring, or many other opposing emotions. That juxtaposition is one of the things I really want to achieve and play with.”

To learn more about the artist, visit En Iwamura’s website and follow him on Instagram.