ROSTOCK.- Leiko Ikemura is a an internationally acclaimed artist. The painter and sculptor has lived and worked in Germany since 1987. The essence of Leiko Ikemura’s art is conveyed in her merging of the human and nature in works culminating in surreal phantasmagorical landscape composites. Fusion and alienation simultaneously appear both paradoxical and harmonious, a synthesis that is also reflected in Leiko Ikemura’s own biography. She is immersed in western art and culture, which has influenced her own roots, enabling the discovery of subject matter and formal languages that are immanent to Japanese traditions.
Kunsthalle Rostock has invited the artist to relate her works to ones from the permanent collection at Kunsthalle Rostock as well as others on loan, to engage both East German and East European art in a dialogue with regard to East Asia. The exhibition comprises around 44 works by Leiko Ikemura from the past three decades, including paintings, watercolors, sculptures, and photographs. The latter, black-and-white photographs from the Fiori Mori series (2020), are being presented in an exhibition for the first time.
The 1997 illustrations for love poems by Marina Zwetajewa (Cvetaeva), one of Russia’s most important 20th century poets, directly demonstrate Leiko Ikemura’s exploration of Eastern European art and culture. In the present exhibition she is taking a different approach. Based on her own circumstances in Germany, confronted by Eastern Europe, and perceived from her own cultural origins in the Far East, she is questioning to what extent such an inquiry can open up new perspectives and horizons.
Leiko Ikemura has selected a total of seven works by three different artists who are represented in the permanent collection at Kunsthalle Rostock: portraits by the Rostock-based painter Kate Diehn-Bitt (1900 – 1978), an installation by the artist duo Ilya & Emilia Kabakov (*1933 / *1945), who live in New York but come from the former Soviet Union, and a seascape by the painter Sabine Moritz (*1969), who grew up in the former East Germany but emigrated to West Germany during the 1980s.
The exhibition also includes works by the printmaker Christin Wilcken (*1982), artist Tanja Zimmermann (*1960) – both of whom live and work in the Rostock region – as well as Czech sculptor and photographer Magdalena Jetelová (*1946), who lives in Germany and Prague. From her own private collection, Leiko Ikemura has selected works by the Polish artist Alicja Kwade (*1979), who lives in Berlin, as well as from the artist and Albanian prime minister Edi Rama (*1964). Additionally a work by the artist duo Gert & Uwe Tobias (*1973), who grew up in Romania and have lived in Germany since 1985, will be shown.
In the dialogue between Leiko Ikemura’s own works and those of the above-mentioned artists, boundaries can be crossed and new spaces of experience opened up. Viewers are immersed in an atmosphere animated by the sensory and emotional. Such issues as migration, interculturality, cultural differences, and the individual’s own identity are addressed in a contemplation of the differing artistic approaches and their related biographies.
The following artists are represented in the exhibition: Kate Diehn-Bitt, Magdalena Jetelová, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Alicja Kwade, Sabine Moritz, Edi Rama, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Christin Wilcken, Tanja Zimmermann, and Marina Zwetajewa (Cvetaeva), amongst others.
Leiko Ikemura was born in Tsu, Japan. She left her country of birth at the age of 21, continuing her literary studies in Spain, where she subsequently studied painting, from 1973 to 1978 in Seville. After relocating to Switzerland, in the early 1980s the first works emerged that would set Leiko Ikemura on the path to becoming an ambitious visual artist. In 1987 she settled in Germany. This was followed by professorships at the Universität der Künste Berlin (1990 – 2016) and another at the Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kanagawa, Japan (since 2014).
