PRO FILES: IKEDA MANABU
Limitless visionary
“Imagination is the beginning of all actions, and so if each one of us can only try to imagine deeply and vividly, surely a great power for change will be born from that.” — Ikeda Manabu
Ikeda Manabu — the incomparable artist from Saga, Southern Japan — is creatively peerless in development and execution.
Manabu has earned international recognition for the detail and scope of his pieces, with the acrylic-based projects often taking years to complete. Manabu laboriously creates entire worlds filled with reflections on the duality of nature and human existence.
For his unmistakably singular talent, Manabu has been honored across the entire world — from Japan to Canada to America — and recognized by the highest-level art experts — from Juxtapoz Magazine to Hi-Fructose t0 The New York Times.
During a respite from brilliance and creation, Manabu took the time to speak about the creation and inspiration behind seven of his pieces (Ark / Existence / Foretoken / History’s Rise And Fall / Regeneration / Territory / Lighthouse), the responsibility of mankind regarding nature and the influence of international exposure.
IKEDA MANABU
- Born in Saga, Japan
- Forty-two years old
- Bachelor of Arts — Tokyo University the Arts (1998)
- Master of Arts — Tokyo University the Arts (2000)
COLLECTIONS
- Takahashi Ryutaro (private collector)
- Multi-year residency — Chazen Museum of Art
- Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art — Shizuoka, Japan
- Mori Art Museum — Tokyo, Japan
- The Obuse Museum — Nagano, Japan
- Chazen Museum of Art — Madison, Wisconsin
EXHIBITIONS
- Ginza Surugadai Gallery — Tokyo, Japan (2001)
- Shinseido — Tokyo, Japan (2004)
- Mizuma Action: Landscape — Tokyo, Japan (2006)
- Mizuma Art Gallery — Tokyo, Japan (2008)
- The Obuse Museum / The Nakajima Chinami Gallery — Nagano, Japan (2009)
- Mizuma Art Gallery: Focus — Tokyo, Japan (2010)
- Holland Cotter’s Best of 2011: Existence — The New York Times (2011)
- West Vancouver Museum: Meltdown — Vancouver, Canada (2013)
- Gallery KART: Ikeda Manabu — Tokyo, Japan (2014)
ARK
- 35 inches × 51 inches
- Length of time to complete: five months
- Year completed: 2005
- Photo: Keizo Kioku
- Collection: Mori Art Museum
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
One city is stacked above another; and then above that one, another — building a super-high-rise architectural construction. A sharpened tip protruding from the clouds, like an ark that follows the sky.
EXISTENCE
- 57 inches × 80.7 inches
- Length of time to complete: one year
- Year completed: 2004
- Collection: Joan and Michael Salke
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
Being responsible for all life — the presence of absolute life.
FORETOKEN
- 74.8 inches × 133.8 inches
- Length of time to complete: two years
- Year completed: 2008
- Photo: Yasuhide Kuge
- Collection: Sustainable Investor Co., Ltd.
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
Nature and man. If the balance between the two becomes compromised, something like a tsunami approaches.
HISTORY’S RISE AND FALL
- 78.7 inches × 78.7 inches
- Length of time to complete: thirteen months
- Year completed: 2006
- Photo: Kei Miyajima
- Collection: Takahashi Collection
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
The history of fortune’s vicissitudes has been repeated since ancient times. Some things flourish, and some perish — and continues today.
REGENERATION
- 63.7 inches × 63.7 inches
- Length of time to complete: six months
- Year completed: 2001
- Collection: Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
The battleship — which was a symbol of humanity’s power — must, too, eventually sink and become engulfed by nature.
TERRITORY
- 16.5 inches × 23.4 inches
- Length of time to complete: three months
- Year completed: 2004
- Photo: Kei Miyajima
- Collection: Takahashi Collection
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
The huge creatures that live within that strait usually change their appearance into islands, and in doing so they often strike into ships and sink them.
LIGHTHOUSE
- 8.6 inches × 10.7 inches
- Length of time to complete: two weeks
- Year completed: 2009
- Photo: Kei Miyajima
- Private Collection
- Material: pen acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board
No matter how much time elapses, the rotten lighthouse’s lamp is never extinguished.
ON GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES AND DIFFERENCES
In a small country like Japan, everything is not too far away from its fellows; whether you’re in the cities or the natural landscapes, there are always many elements which enter into your field of vision — in a great variety of colours and shapes, too. I feel like that is somehow related to Japanese people’s very detailed view of the world.
On the other hand, Canada and America are enormously vast, and more than half of the things which occupy your field of vision are the sky, or the wilderness — the atmosphere is overwhelming different.
So now when I am creating my works, it is not only about amassing intricately detailed things, but I also want to express the vastness of the atmosphere which engulfs them within its enormity — this strong desire has been born within my practice.
I also think that in an environment like that of Japan where natural disasters are a frequent occurrence, people are more closely aware of the fearsomeness of nature and its finitude.
Fortunately, both Canada and Wisconsin are places where there are almost no large natural disasters, and this makes me extremely interested in how artists in countries with many natural disasters come to reflect those through their eyes within their works.
ON RESPONSIBILITY OF SOCIETY TO BALANCE TECHNOLOGY WITH NATURE
This is very difficult, because the extent of people’s awareness of it varies country by country. In the case of Japan, I think the land’s narrowness and the population’s hugeness mean that — especially in urban areas — people are strongly conscious of a sense of crisis in that the nature around them is becoming polluted and altered.
In such overwhelmingly man-made and crowded zones, you can only just slightly feel a sense of the presence of nature in places like parks and rivers — things like the sky or the earth’s surface.
In order for this fleeting sense of nature not to disappear entirely, we have electricity conservation, economic frugality, taking public transport instead of cars and so on.
I feel like humanity is making great efforts to come to grips with what it can do in the face of this situation.
Even so, as each year the extent of the natural disasters that occur seems to become ever graver, perhaps this sense of environmental crisis starts to feel more and more strongly like the reality.
On the other hand, in very large countries like America or Canada, the overwhelmingly controlling power of nature is strong. As someone originally from a small country myself, it sometimes makes me think that humanity can only ever exist as an insignificant smaller part within that vast, controlling power.
Whether or not the meager humanity here more or less squanders its resources and whether or not we dispose of our waste, the magnificent environment around us is like a seemingly unchanging optical illusion — and that is frightening.
If you don’t use a car here you cannot buy your groceries. The seemingly generously large sizes of paper napkins here — like those you see in restaurants — or paper towels or toilet paper; and the quantity of paper leaflets which arrive and then are just thrown away immediately — it’s an astonishing amount of everyday waste. We can only think, “What a waste” — but for the American people, perhaps they don’t even think of it as a problem.
If you consider the whole planet, even if we in a relatively small country make great efforts to change our consumption patterns, if people in much bigger countries consume even more than us then nothing will change environmentally. However, I feel like we cannot criticize that situation, either.
I say that because I think that, for all these kinds of things, unless you have first-hand experience of them you cannot really understand them. Because no matter how much you know about environmental change from the news or the internet, your sense of the gravity of the situation will change depending on where you live.
If you try living in both types of places, and you try to really conceive of what could be done to address both the largeness of the problem and the difficulty of its solution…
I am very much fluctuating in my thoughts.
In the end, I think that perhaps the reality is that unless a crisis really occurs, we will not be able to change — and if we can imagine that scenario even a little bit, that will be linked to our ability to prevent such a crisis.
Imagination is the beginning of all actions, and so if each one of us can only try to imagine deeply and vividly, surely a great power for change will be born from that.
If each and every one of us can think about all the things around us, “Where did this come from? What was it before?” and try to imagine this, I think this could itself lead to one form of action.
When I make work, I do so with the thought it might itself also become an impetus for such action.
- Special appreciation to Makiko Mikawa (Mizuma Art Gallery) for translation and images.
