Since the 1980s, Leiko Ikemura (b. 1951, Japan. Lives and works in Germany) has cultivated a distinctive oeuvre which combines Asian and European art traditions and creates a unique pictorial world. If her early work was marked by radical imagery, she shifted over time towards a more delicate, poetic form of expression.
Tracing an arc from the 1980s to the present day, and conceived as a symphony of Ikemura’s themes and motifs rather than a classic retrospective, the show brings together seventy-five works. It offers a cross-section of her multifaceted creative oeuvre —from painting and graphic art, through photography and video, to sculpture.
Staged in an exhibition architecture by the renowned architect Philipp von Matt, Ikemura’s husband, Floating Spheres demonstrates Ikemura’s extraordinary creativity and turns it into a tangible experience: a fascinating cosmos, consisting of plants, animals, landscapes, and portrayals of human expression which transcends the boundaries between the arts and opens up new perspectives onto space, shape, and light.
