![\"\"](\"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Leiko-Ikemura-Tsuchi-to-Hoshi-Our-Planet-NACT-2019-Photos-Philipp-von-Matt-high-res_-75-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u00a9Reiko Ikemura \u00a0Photo: Philipp von Matt<\/p>\n
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There is a notion of limitlessness. Everything looks blurry and unclear. Colors, shapes and human faces seem to melt into the background. They are aggregates of visual elements that seem to express weakness, smallness and softness, but in fact they display at once strength, grandeur, and a smell of violence. Like a cute and fluffy looking rabbit has solid teeth and meat that tastes good, and metabolically super-active cells when observed through a microscope, Leiko Ikemura continues to explore her own \u201cscenic mountain path\u201d to see \u201cwhat the world as she knows it is really like\u201d \u2013 a quest that considerate philosophers, artists and science fiction writers have been pursuing since ages.<\/p>\n
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\u00a9Reiko Ikemura \u00a0Photo: Philipp von Matt<\/p>\n
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I use the metaphor of \u201cmountains\u201d because I was highly impressed by the artist\u2019s comment in her autobiography Doko ni mo zokusabai watashi (I belong to nowhere), <\/em>explaining how she holed up in a cottage in the Swiss mountains and spent about a year devoting herself to creative work.<\/p>\n \u201cAt such secluded places, artificial cultures, human activities, and anthropocentric thinking in general don\u2019t apply and therefore loose specific weight. It was an experience as if concepts of time, and manmade boundaries dividing nations, genders and ages got blurred, and separations fell apart. [\u2026] A sensation like shaking off pieces of equipment one by one, so that everything is gradually purified.\u201d<\/p>\n This sensation is reminiscent of the feeling in moments we have climbed a mountain and stand at the top, and realize how tiny a creature man is. In a way, Ikemura promotes such stereotype kind of intuition. When a human being stands all alone in a forest in the mountains, for example, what remains there of the world that we are supposed to perceive through our five senses? As described by Mahler in his first symphony, by Messiaenin \u201dDes canyons aux \u00e9toiles,\u201d and by Santoka Taneda in the poem\u201dI go in I go in still blue mountains,\u201d the motive is to present in the form of artworks the essential \u201ccore of nature\u201d \u2013 a territory that is otherwise not accessible to humans \u2013 for us to be grasped through the given tools that are our eyes, ears and language.<\/p>\n \u00a9Reiko Ikemura \u00a0Photo: Philipp von Matt<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To me, the \u201climitlessness\u201d in Ikemura\u2019s works seems to be a means for translating her perception of the world. While the idea to \u201cdepict things as they are and as they appear\u201d is many an artist\u2019s motivation (referring to Paul Klee\u2019s wise words \u201cThe role of art is not to reproduce visible objects, but to make invisibles visible\u201d), Ikemura\u2019s \u201cthings as they are\u201d may be described as a formula that expresses the coexistence of confidence in her body\u2019s senses when facing nature (not in brief moments, but within the space-time of daily life), and distrust of the (sensing) human being in the form of Ikemura herself as the perceiving subject.<\/p>\n Elements that are painted in \u201climitless\u201d ways in such works as \u201cZarathustra III,\u201d \u201cTokaido\u201d and \u201cGenesis\u201d are simple and few in number. Nonetheless, what appeals to the viewer is that \u201csound wave\u201d of sorts that is emitted by the colors, that indescribably cloudy mix of ocher, gray, black and light blue. Standing in front of these works, many people sense in things like the skull \u201cTokaido\u201d the future of every human being \u2013 to die and return to dust. But at the same time, at the other end of the spectrum there are also notions of \u201clife.\u201d The indifferent expression of \u201clife\u201d in Ikemura\u2019s paintings is not at all a \u201cgood to be alive\u201d kind of hymn to human life, and it comes across neither vulgar nor sublime, but it is definitely \u201cpainted\u201d there even though not manifested in any concrete shape.<\/p>\n \u00a9Reiko Ikemura \u00a0Photo: Philipp von Matt<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In his autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask, <\/em>Yukio Mishima writes that he remembers the moment of his birth. Reading his description of water and light in the basin of his first bath, one finds no words to qualify this author\u2019s tremendous powers of expression, but unfortunately, for us who have accumulated expressions and experiences, a \u201dbrand new encounter with the world\u201d is no longer possible.<\/p>\n Leiko Ikemura is a multilingual who is fluent in Japanese, Spanish, German and English, all of which she has picked up while traveling across Europe. To move from one place to another is something she describes as \u201cgetting in direct contact with the world while language is temporarily switched off,\u201d and she has in fact experienced such verbal \u201dreincarnation\u201d several times. The intensity of images in Ikemura\u2019s works is certainly rooted in the process of her understanding of language, realizingthat the German \u201cSchwarzwald\u201d is awordthat represents a forestthat is quite different from the Japanese idea of a forest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the \u201dUtsubuse no shojo (Girls lying face down)\u201d series that Ikemura is primarily known for, \u201cLion Red\u201d is particularly impressive. Charged at once with red hot energy and glowing desire, anxiety of living and a tremendous urge to create, the girl with her slightly raised upper body and a lower body that melts into red was like a token of Ikemura herselfwhen she was a little girl!<\/p>\n Translated by Andreas Stuhlmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9Reiko Ikemura \u00a0Photo: Philipp von Matt There is a notion of limitlessness. Everything looks blurry and […]","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":3292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[73],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3284"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3425,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions\/3425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Leiko-Ikemura-Tsuchi-to-Hoshi-Our-Planet-NACT-2019-Photos-Philipp-von-Matt-high-res_-12-683x1024.jpg\")
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