Leiko Ikemura’s career is a “unique synthesis of Japanese and Western culture.” Her paintings and sculptures of hybrids between humans and animals, as well as paintings of Girls fixed between childhood and adulthood, equally transcend any specifications and definitions. Fascination with creatures that exist on the threshold between the real and the mythological awards Ikemura’s works almost an otherworldly atmosphere, drawing from her very own specific background and experience.
In her paintings, drawings and sculptures, Ikemura delves into the contradictions inherent in our perceptions of the world and our identities: the interplay between presence and absence, vulnerability and empowerment, light and shadow, nature and culture. Her hybrid beings across mediums blur such boundaries as they draw from traditions of both Western and Eastern art, making even those discernments obsolete in the face of creative freedom.
Ikemura’s work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, among others. In the past few years Ikemura has opened several solo exhibitions around the globe including “Towards New Seas” at Kunstmuseum Basel in 2019, “Witty Witches” at the Georg Kolbe Museum in 2023 and “Transfiguration” at the MOMAT collection in Japan earlier this year, as well as “Floating Spheres” in Kunsthalle Emden.
