Leiko Ikemura

Karsten Greve Gallery, Paris
Through July 29

Leiko Ikemura’s research of painting and sculpture is characterized by the unique exchange between sensibility tied to Japanese culture and the influence of the European matrix—the artist has lived and studied in Spain, and he now resides in Colonia and teaches in Berlin.

The principle elements that make up his imaginary universe are space, the body—female in particular—and mutation. These elements take on forms that refer time and again to vegetation, architecture, mythology, and animal life (above all that of human beings). In other terms, these iconographical aspects emerge from an interior world in which the human being appears still tightly bound to nature and the animal kingdom. Incomplete, dangling in the void, curved or elongated, the bodies of Leiko Ikemura appear immersed in a dimension of flux, without time, suspended in the endless flow of life.

In the exhibition at the Karsten Greve Gallery, the artist presents paintings, folios, and a series of sculptures in terracotta and bronze. His works often seem unfinished—one gets the feeling that the creative process has been interrupted or that a progressive degradation of the forms has been suddenly halted in mid-swing. The most interesting works are undoubtedly the sculptures. On one side some bronze figures stand at attention, their immobile verticality somehow erratic and at the same time disquieting—one of them, for example, has a half-corroded face and two long ass’s ears.

On the other side, a notably impressive installation frames parts of the body (heads, arms and legs realized in wrinkled and tanned terracotta), which are centrally suspended by wires in their environment. One finds this across from a sort of unmemorable statue that, lacking any threatening valences, retains the melancholic charm of an ancient, archeological find.




Francesco Poli
Translation by Cortney Price