Leiko Ikemura au Heredium Museum

"​​​​Light on the horizon”

3 avril - 4 août 2024

Heredium Museum
Daejeon, Corée

Version anglaise

HEREDIUM, a representative multicultural complex in Daejeon, is pleased to announce Leiko Ikemura’s first museum exhibition in Korea, "Light on the Horizon", from April 3rd to August 4th, 2024. It is the second contemporary art solo exhibition presented by HEREDIUM after Anselm Kiefer, a master of neo-expressionism.
Leiko Ikemura is an internationally recognized contemporary artist who was born in Japan, studied art in Spain, started her career in Switzerland, and lives and works in Germany. As can be seen from the artist's life, such as the hybrid of cultural exchanges, she has a unique charm of integrating heterogeneous fields to create a new imaginary space.

The exhibition introduces ‘Horizon’, which has become an important artistic motif for the artist. The "sea" is a familiar place for her, who grew up on the coast, but one day, the scenery from her seat on the Tokai Line train was new and intense as if she had never seen it before. The experience of the day, which was like a memory of the beginning, remained an unforgettable mark on her, and the imagination of a new world beyond the horizon became a source of her art.

HEREDIUM illuminates Light on the Horizon and intends to give viewers the experience of "imagining from the visible to the invisible" with Ikemura.
The selection of paintings featured in this exhibition includes ‘Cosmic-scapes’ such as "Before Thunder & After Dark" (2014/17) and "Sinus Spring" (2018). The large-scale landscape paintings express the animistic worldview of the East, painted by the artist in the 2010s. The background with infinite space and the shapes that cross the human-animal boundary express the inner world of existence beyond the world that can be sensibly perceived. The work delicately depicts the inner side of existence by using various colors and natural materials such as nettle and jute to feel the shape of spreading particles of color. This series represents “spring” after “autumn” in Anselm Kiefer’s previous exhibition.

A centrepoint of the exhibition will be the "Usagi Kannon (340)" (2012/24). It embodies a synthesis of both animal and human aspects, blending with Buddhist and Christian iconography. The artist created the work inspired by an article about a rabbit born with a birth defect due to a nuclear leak during the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. With hybrid rabbit ears and a crying face as a symbol of universal mourning, the work raises belief about the cycle of creation and destruction, and talks about concerns about the future of the planet. The work also drew attention for its presentations in public places and institutions such as the Sainsbury Centre Sculpture Park, Norwich, UK, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin, Germany and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland. 

In addition, the artist's glass sculptures, which have become part of her visual language since 2019, are also noteworthy. Expressing various aspects of hybridity, this group of work embodies the crossing of human-animal or animal-nature and implies the fundamental coexistence of humans and animals. The artist explains that she was filled with hope while observing the process of capturing light within the glass body of the sculpture.

The artist's presentation of new ideas across boundaries and the hybridity naturally meets the specificity of HEREDIUM. HEREDIUM is a building that restored the former Oriental Development Company created in 1922, as a multicultural complex. By seeing contemporary art in the past space of modern cultural heritage, visitors can experience the expansion and convergence of time and space. This exhibition also features the artist's latest works from the past decade to establish a clear connection with the 'present'.
Leiko Ikemura has been widely exhibited in more than 500 solo and group exhibitions in 29 countries over the past 40 years. Her work is in the collections of prominent art museums, including The Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, and The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Japan.