Masakatsu Iwamoto

Masakatsu Iwamoto is a contemporary artist living and working in Saitama, Japan, just outside Tokyo. His name, Mr., was borrowed from Japan’s Mr. Baseball, Shigeo Nagashima. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Sokei Art School in Tokyo in 1996. He began garnering attention with his drawing of anime-style characters on the backs of shopping receipts he had gathered from his daily purchases.

The Otaku subculture emerged in Japan in the 1970s and consisted mostly of males who were consumed by manga comics, anime animation, sci-fi literature and video games. Mr.'s paintings and sculptures are influenced by this movement. He produces at times sexually explicit works that comment on the Lolita-esque fantasies prevalent in the Otaku culture.

Mr. was discovered by Takashi Murakami in 1995 and since then has been involved with Murakami's art organization Kaikai Kiki. Recently, Mr.'s work was on view at the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Lyon with fellow Kaikai Kiki artists Chiho Aoshima and Aya Takano. In 2005, he was included in the acclaimed exhibition "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" at Japan Society in New York.