3424 - LEIKO IKEMURA

LEIKO IKEMURA (Tsu 1951–lives and works, among other places, in Berlin) Untitled. 1984. Oil on canvas. 180 × 200 cm. Certificate: Leiko Ikemura & Tony Wuethrich Galerie (gallery certificate), Basel, 19 June 2025. Provenance: - Artist’s studio. - Tony Gerber Galerie, Bern. - Tony Wuethrich Galerie, Basel. Leiko Ikemura’s work evokes a world in which humans, animals and plants are connected as kindred beings. Her visual language touches on something archaic: an intimation of an original unity in which life has not yet been ordered into fixed categories and humanity appears as part of nature. This connectedness shapes Ikemura’s artistic practice. She regards the different manifestations of nature as equal. Humans and animals are not opposites, but parts of a shared whole. The archaic quality of her images evokes no particular historical period or culture. Rather, the central idea is a common foundation for all life. A related notion also resonates in the pictorial world of Franz Marc and the ‘Blauer Reiter’ circle, in which animals appear as independent beings possessing an inner reality of their own. Ikemura also questions the boundaries that language and patterns of thought draw between things. Concepts create order, separate and define. Her art, by contrast, leaves open the possibility that reality is less clearly divided than we perceive it to be. Kinship does not mean sameness. Differences between humans and animals remain, without one being placed above the other. Her works suggest that closeness need not erase difference. At their centre are relationships between living beings and what connects them beyond their differences. * The full tax is charged on this item marked *, i.e. VAT is charged on the sum will be refunded to Purchasers providing a validly stamped export declaration.