Leiko Ikemura: Contradicting Form

They speak, whisper and never shout, until they create a wild murmur immersed in clouds of damp vapor. These are anonymous identities of girls, women and children; some play with flowers, others spin, dance, while others sit. They are certainly not goddesses or Madonnas, even though some names might suggest otherwise; they are simply anonymous beings, definitely feminine, living in the space of an undefined place. This is what the Tim Van Laere Gallery in Rome presents in Leiko Ikemura (Tsu, Japan, 1951) solo exhibition, titled Mia Mamma Roma, running until February 1, 2025. It may not seem so, but the exhibition revolves around the indefinite and infinite forms that the pictorial and sculptural material can assume; therefore, Ikemura’s identities never acquire a clear and closed shape, but remain indeterminate in the undulations of ceramics and bronze and in the subdued tempera shades.

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

The coarse and rough-textured jute fixes the protagonists in a spectral and magnetic presence, with color halos that push beyond the threshold of the implausible figurative. It is only natural to ask: what are Ikemura’s figures if not the origin or a germ of corporeality, perhaps partially human, with the only certainty being the female sex? One must reflect on what is meant by this term, not only in relation to sex but also as one who has a broad and deep connection to the world, with the capacity to generate further life; in other words, one who carries the seed of happy procreation, the complex ambiguity of emotions, such as deep sorrow and the joy of existence, the sense of loss, and a sincere self-awareness.

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

The title of the exhibition, taken from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Mamma Roma, should not be underestimated, as it reveals how the artist continues to look at the city – with the same awe-struck eyes she had when she first arrived in Rome, leaving Japan for the first time – fascinated by its complex intellectual and cultural identity, as well as by the melancholic detachment that Rome establishes with the past and the presence of an ideal and poetic relationship with the present. Thus, for Ikemura, it is natural to accompany the title with the possessive adjective Mia, emphasizing the affectionate bond with a place that holds personal and special value for her. Although the title surprisingly echoes a typical expression of Italian identity, the connection to the eponymous film draws attention to other aspects, such as: the female question, the importance of maternal identity and more generally, the relationship with one’s emotional state. Indeed, both in the paintings and sculptures on display, Ikemura unashamedly submits herself to the pressure of self-examination. It goes without saying that what is exhibited reflects a fracture, discomfort and uncertainty – synonyms of inner struggle – in a story in perpetual transformation that seeks in every way to reconcile and rediscover the lost connection with nature, but even more so with oneself.

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Mia Mamma Roma”, installation view, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

It happens that the unspoken dogma of form becomes the major premise of its contradiction, thus becoming the main theme of the entire exhibition project: the openness and the sense of incompleteness in the works, preventing any form of closure and excluding any fixed interpretation, makes the sculptures and the figures depicted on jute beings in continuous metamorphosis. Moreover, these identities – whose definition of ‘Girls’ does not refer to their age but to the common female sex – are uncertain in their nebulous colors, living only through the evidence of their actions. They dance and linger in a suspended and unclear atmosphere. Here lies the artist’s technical prowess: the expansion of the formless halos of tempera, animated by patches and gestural marks partially absorbed by the jute, are in dialogue with the small, measured sutures of the sculptures, necessary for the imaginary oxygenation of fibrous organs, feeding the melancholic breath of the creatures

Leiko Ikemura, “Red Children”, 2024, tempera e olio su juta, 100 x 120 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Red Children”, 2024, tempera and oil on jute, 100 x 120 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

For Ikemura, both painting and sculpture are primarily a measure of the indeterminacy of space; therefore, form, color and matter are only apparently solid, and the final work expresses a desire for fixity in which nothing is truly fixed. The tones, the relative sense of the stain transformed into a halo and the marks executed with irruent expressive freedom are of fundamental importance. In this way, the chromatic substance is imbued with evidence and depth, with complementary hues applied in relation to the totality of the color range: red, yellow and purple are introduced to modulate the greens, ensuring that the perception of the work retains a component of dynamism, exploding in a subdued tension. In this tonal synthesis, Ikemura intentionally prefers to maintain a sense of sketchiness, in a freedom of execution in which the instability of form is the necessary variation that gives life to the work.

Leiko Ikemura, “Playing with Violet”, 2022, tempera e olio su juta, 80 x 60 cm; “Against Green”, 2022, tempera e olio su juta, 80 x 60 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Playing with Violet”, 2022, tempera and oil on jute, 80 x 60 cm; “Against Green”, 2022, tempera e olio su juta, 80 x 60 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

Thus, in both sculptures and paintings, the artist works with surprising manual freedom, a marvelous fluidity that reveals an attentiveness to forms in their potentially infinite expansion. However, the true nature of the artist’s research emerges in the creatures drawn with pastels on paper: the marks are even more nervous, sign-like and overwhelming in their strong grace, expressing a joy of life that is seamlessly combined with the splendid but painful absurdity of their condition. Therefore, like the protagonist of Mamma Roma, Ikemura’s search is not a consolatory practice; rather, it is the acquisition of a harsh awareness, which, just like a caress received after the film, brings out the sweet lament of a living being, melancholic and full of profound sorrow

Leiko Ikemura, “Ma Donna”, 2024, tempera e olio su juta, 100 x 80 cm; “Frog Girl”, 2023, tempera e olio su juta, 100 x 80 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Ma Donna”, 2024, tempera and oil on jute, 100 x 80 cm; “Frog Girl”, 2023, tempera e olio su juta, 100 x 80 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

The sculptures, by virtue of their becoming alive in space, touch on issues that paintings do not address, such as: the fertility of life, the relationship between rationality and dream, sublimation and monstrosity, the creative effort of breath and its tender emotions, the biological functioning of formless creatures in their physical and chemical development. In contrast, in painting, this traumatic aspect of life is more subdued, almost alluded to, bringing forth the purest and most spiritual form of this universe. Indeed, the works present with fewer distortions, lacking compositional rigor, so that no order of reading exists, and the color halos allow the gaze to wander freely. However, the image radiates around a center, as if it were generated by a light electric shock, a movement in which the barely suggested figuration is never in conflict with the abstract elements.

Leiko Ikemura, “Zawa”, 2022, pastello su carta, 30 x 22 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp - Rome

Leiko Ikemura, “Zawa”, 2022, pastel on paper, 30 x 22 cm, courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp – Rome

For this reason, the artist seems to contradict form in a rebellious way – understanding that it is not sacrilegious – because she is certainly aware of the deeper and more sacred values of living beings, such as the instinct for life, the unsettling as a state of being, and the sacredness of the creative act, understood as something barely graspable through a form that is always indeterminate and revocable. Thus, if the sculptures live as ‘Girls’ in their most concrete configuration, the paintings are the gathering of the damp winds in which the metamorphoses of their forms occur. After all, what is closer to life than form in its infinite flexions? Therefore, Mia Mamma Roma is an exhibition about the value of the origin of a new biological seed, and it is precisely in the contradiction of form that the dreamlike suspension of the entire exhibition derives. The creatures that animate it are the gift of a waking dream, capable of leaving us with the desire to live them, despite their condition of fragile essence.

Info:

Leiko Ikemura. Mia Mamma Roma
Tim Van Laere Gallery
16/11/2024 – 01/02/2025
From Tuesday to Saturday 1.00pm – 6.00 pm
www.timvanlaeregallery.com
Palazzo Donarelli Ricci, Via Giulia 98, 00186 Roma
info@timvanlaeregallery.com | 06 97 603 423


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