Leiko Ikemura

Leiko Ikemura is a Japanese-Swiss painter and sculptor. In the 1990’s, the female figure crystallized as the main focus of her work. Trees and faces have come to be her key subjects, chosen as metaphoric symbols of human fragility. By using almost transparent materials—very diluted paint and varnish—she stresses incorporeality. Frequent use of the color red, considered by the artist as the representation of life and passion, accentuates the allegorical nature of the forms present in her drawings and paintings. Ikemura’s faces, with minimized traits, transmit vulnerability and helplessness. In her works, the limits between the real and the spiritual world blur until they disappear, leaving behind some connotations of a cultural and territorial loss.

She has had solo exhibitions at Bonner Kunstverein, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Langen Foundation in Neuss, Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art, Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin, and Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe.

Courtesy of Polígrafa Obra Gráfica