Leiko Ikemura
Aquí Estamos
March 8th — July 3rd
Puerto Banús, Marbella.
With the international exhibition ‘Aquí Estamos‘ by Japanese artist Leiko Ikemura, the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències de Valencia presents the artist’s most significant sculptural exhibition to date in Spain. The importance of this group of sculptures is amplified in the surroundings of Puerto Banús, sheltered by the Mediterranean Sea, the iconic Control Tower of the marina, the large yachts moored at its docks, and a Sierra Blanca in the distance that allows to enjoy outdoors art and nature in harmony, transmitting through these sculptures messages of mercy, compassion and reverie.
The exhibition by Japanese artist Leiko Ikemura is composed of six sculptures balanced between spirituality and compassion. ‘Aquí Estamos‘ is the artist’s most significant sculptural exhibition. A free, open-air exhibition that combines art and culture in the same space.
The six bronze sculptures with colored patinas will be displayed in the luxury marina. Usagi Greeting, Figure with three Birds, Double Figure, Cat Girl Lying, Lying Girl, and Catgirl with Usagi are the pieces by the 2001 recipient of the German Critics’ Association Award.
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Once again, the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències de Valencia will collaborate with Puerto Banús in the cession of its works. ’My Secret Garden’ by Belgian artist Arne Quinze was the first collaboration between the museum and the port. With this kind of initiatives, Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències brings art closer to other cities and audiences.
Children’s beauty, fluffed among flowers. Leiko Ikemura’s exhibition is made up of flowers represented by children’s figures that, in full development, long for another world. Without going any further, Usagi Greeting, represented with a hare’s head and human body, possesses in her interior a hollow space where any child can take shelter from the world around him and return to the maternal protection prior to his birth.
‘Aquí Estamos’ invites us to reflect on spirituality from a universal perspective and from femininity. A figure-temple of welcome, with a philosophy of acceptance and embrace of motherhood and the various beings born into this world or yet to be born. Crossing the boundaries between cultures, it combines characteristics of European art and the Eastern world.
The Japanese artist’s exhibition thematises and promotes the fusion of man and nature in a hybrid being that evokes feelings of strangeness and sympathy, of estrangement and familiarity at the same time. It symbolises a tribute to women from childhood and a call for the hope of universal equality, without limitations of race, colour or identity.
As a European tourist reference, Puerto Banús demonstrates its commitment to culture and awareness. Two fundamental pillars in the human development of any human being.
Biography
Leiko Ikemura was born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Berlin. In 1970 she began her studies at the University of Osaka, Japan, where she remained until 1972. That same year she left Japan to study Hispanic philology in Granada and Salamanca, after initially studying Spanish language and literature at the University of Osaka.
After her arrival in Germany in 1985, Ikemura’s work began a very personal path. Her female figures detached from reality and her cosmic landscapes inhabited by fantastic creatures are the result of a creator who embraced Western art only to become aware of her Eastern roots and, finally, to reconcile both cultures.
In her most recent works, Ikemura pursues her longing for a fusion between man and nature. Landscapes of marked melancholic evocation, rooted in the soul and belonging to the territory of the oneiric coexist, in recent years, with emerging morphologies and formal metamorphoses that allude to the artist’s early works.
PHOTO GALLERY «AQUÍ ESTAMOS»