Leiko Ikemura Portraits

Leiko Ikemura (born 1951 in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan; lives and works in Berlin) does not con-form to established rules in her art. In over thirty years, she has created a multifaceted body of work that includes paintings, watercolors, drawings, terracotta and bronze sculptures. Ikemura studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Seville from 1973 to 1978. In 1979, she went to Zurich and then to Cologne, where she drew attention to herself in the context of the Neue Wilde during the 1980s. Despite this link, her work was already characterized by originality and independence at the time.

Along with exploring the synthesis of Western and Asian cultures, and confronting what it means to be a foreigner, Ikemura's works are frequently concerned with the female figure, particularly during the transition to adolescence. She paints in watercolors, depicting these ambiguous identities and intermediate stages in portraits that show shadowy faces—sometimes a woman or a child, but also male faces in pastel tones, which dissolve toward the edge of the work.

The publication Portraits comprises a sequence of more than sixty works from the eponymous series of watercolors, here shown for the first time. With texts by Nils Emmerichs and Bera Nordal.