The Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura first caused a stir in Switzerland in the early 1980s with expressive and confrontational compositions that associated her with the Neue Wilde. She later rose to international renown with girlish figures unmoored from reality and cosmic landscapes populated by fabulous chimerical creatures. Japanese audiences celebrate her as an artist who wholeheartedly embraced Western art only to grow aware of her cultural roots and eventually forged a singular synthesis of both cultures.

Presenting drawings, paintings, and sculptures, the exhibition Toward new Seas is a focused retrospective, mounted in consultation with the artist and in cooperation with the National Art Center, Tokyo.

Through an insistent reflection on her life amid an alien culture, on solitude and the assimilation of new languages, Ikemura has staked out a domain of her own that allowed her to devise a personal and authentic synthesis of Japanese and European cultures. The »war goddess« of the early works has yielded to the »Amazon«, who exudes strength as well as composure.

(Text: Kunstmuseum Basel)

Kunstmuseum Basel

Leiko Ikemura. Toward new Seas

11 May – 1 September 2019

Vernissage: Friday, 10 May 2019, 6:30 – 9 pm