Works

One drawing, one beam of light falling on a bench after dark. Most people will never see it; they will hear about it. Making Rumors (2026) lets the work assemble itself, word by word, in people who were never there.

Photographs made after the city's lights go out. In one half of the series a shape surfaces on its own as the dark deepens; in the other, a strong light is thrown into a place where there was nothing to see. Fade out, Fade up (since 2012) names both.

Through the match the referee urges the boxers on. Then, in one instant, he lowers his hand and ends it. Referee Stop is a series of drawings of that gesture—an official act of restraint that is also, briefly, something passing between two people.

The goalkeeper, often idle at the match’s edge, seems almost apart from the team. This video lingers on his quiet centimeters of adjustment, revealing tension and unseen labor that asks: is he truly one of them?

One player is not told that the match has been cut in half. Everyone else knows, and no one ever tells him. Time Thief—Half Time Project (2008) is not about the moment of discovery—there is none. The time is taken, and it is never given back.

This is a 24-hour clock—yet without hands or numbers. Morning, noon, night: the same view shifts into countless scenes. It does not measure time, but proposes a way to perceive its unseen layers.

Recent drawings include football goalkeepers, anthropomorphic cats and rabbits, and plans for installations. Some carry ideas that later unfold into larger works; others are not about anything at all. Iikawa draws as he likes, and enjoys it.

These paintings depict companions of Mr. Kobayashi the Pink Cat, characters Iikawa has drawn since 1999. Each canvas is stretched from the actual pink fabric that formed the giant cat at the Hakone Open-Air Museum in 2022. They connect with plan drawings and installations such as Pulling Time, Arrangement, Adjustment, Movement, and Very Heavy Bag.