Masaaki Iwasa 岩佐昌昭

New works by Masaaki Iwasa 岩佐昌昭 will be on view at ARJ Santa Monica, beginning June 6, 2026.

Iwasa makes ceramics the way a priest marks time: slowly, attentively, with an eye toward what endures. His vessels hold their surfaces like old temple objects hold gold leaf: the metal pooling here, burning away there, leaving behind something that looks less finished than aged. The bronze works glow. The silver ones lean toward shadow. Each form, folded, faceted, pressed into itself, carries the weight of a decision made once and not revisited.

Born in Ehime Prefecture, Iwasa spent nearly a decade training under master potters throughout Japan before settling in Izumo, a historic region in western Japan. There, he serves as head priest of Tokuen Temple, a Rinzai Zen monastery with over three hundred years of history, and tends his kiln on the same grounds. That combination of spiritual discipline and daily making is rare, and it shows in the work: nothing is incidental, nothing is hurried.

On view beginning June 6 at ARJ Santa Monica.