Porträts / Portraits

"I cease to exist when I work."

Leiko Ikemura (born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan; lives and works inBerlin) does not con-form to established rules in her art. In over thirtyyears, 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 from1973 to 1978. In 1979, she went to Zurich and then to Cologne,where she drew attention to herself in the context of the Neue Wilden during the 1980s. Despite this link, her work was already characterized by originality and independence at the time.

In 1991, she was appointed Professor of Painting at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, and she holds a professorship at the Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kanagawa-Ku.

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.