Leiko Ikemura

Leiko Ikemura (*1951, Tsu, Japan), lives and works in Berlin. In her yearslong artistic practice, Leiko Ikemura has created a complex, poetic, and internationally acclaimed oeuvre. Her ceramic, bronze and glass sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs and video works offer a narrative journey through imaginary (pictorial) worlds. Ambiguous and multivalent, ever-changing, condensing and dissolving as well as creaturely, organic, and landscape-related elements seem to coalesce in amorphous configurations. Central, recurring themes are femininity, motherhood, sexuality, transculturality, cosmology, interconnectedness, and cyclicality. It is this transitional state, this in-between space, that interests her and is expressed formally through a mixture of figurative and abstract elements, but also made tangible through the simultaneity of past, present, and future. Ikemura's visual language is both sensual and raw, conveying a sense of timelessness and mysticism. The fragile yet persistent figures, mostly girls and women or anthropomorphic hybrid beings, in her paintings and drawings float in timeless places, disappearing or merging with the background. Her painterly work is influenced by East Asian sansuiga painting traditions, surrealism, post-war abstraction, and the revival of figurative painting in the 1980s.

Leiko Ikemura's works are housed in renowned international collections such as the Kunstmuseum Basel; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunsthaus Zürich; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Collection Florence & Daniel Guerlain, Paris; Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos; Albertina, Vienna; mumok-Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; Kunstsammlung NRW-Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Burger Collection Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Tsu; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.