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The Art World in Focus
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Ikeda Manabu

IKEDA MANABU

Rebirth Mizuma Art Gallery 26 July–9 September 2017 Tokyo
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Press Release

Ikeda’s first major solo touring museum retrospective exhibition The Pen - Condensed Universe - opened in January this year. Its first venue was the Saga Prefectural Art Museum in Ikeda’s own home prefecture of Saga, where the exhibition was seen by over 95,000 people, breaking the museum’s visitor numbers record. It has just completed its second touring location at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, and so far it has fascinated a wide number of people with a selection of approximately 120 works, ranging from pieces created in Ikeda’s school days to his current practice.

Taking place seven years on from his 2010 solo exhibition Focus at Mizuma Art Gallery, this exhibition will center upon the Tokyo premiere of Ikeda’s newest work Rebirth. At three metres tall and four metres wide, Ikeda’s largest ever work to date, Rebirth took two years to conceive and three years and three months to execute, and was entirely created during a residency Ikeda undertook in Madison, Wisconsin, U. S. A.

Looking at the work in its entirety, at its centre stands a massive tree with a profusion flowers in full bloom, which bears an overwhelming sense of presence. However, focusing on individual parts of the work we gradually become aware of a great variety of different landscapes and stories unfolding within it.

Part of the impetus for creating this work originated in the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster, and Rebirth throughout uses free and light imaginative and expressive capabilities to depict in juxtaposition the continuously recurring existence of disaster throughout the world, and the relationship between disasters and humanity. For Ikeda, who was living and working abroad at the time of the earthquake disaster, the encounters with new landscapes and peoples in different countries has breathed new life into his work.

Confronted with a large disaster, humanity cannot help but feel a sense of powerlessness, and yet perhaps precisely because the idea of continuing to live on, without losing hope, is so sincerely expressed within Ikeda’s work, this gives its power to move the hearts of viewers. You are invited to take this chance to enjoy viewing the completed Rebirth, a masterpiece by Ikeda Manabu.

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About the Artist

Born in 1973 in Saga Prefecture, Japan. Graduated from the Department of Design at Tokyo University of the Arts in 1998. Through his graduation project, he established his own distinctive technique of intricate drawing using dip pens on paper. In 2000, he completed his MFA at the same university. From 2011, he spent time in Vancouver, Canada, as a recipient of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Overseas Study Program for Artists. Since 2013, he has been engaged in a long-term residency and production project at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. With his overwhelming intricacy, unique sensibility, and creative vision, he has received high acclaim both in Japan and internationally. He currently resides in the United States. Recent highlights of his exhibition history include the solo show Flowers from the Wreckage, first held at the Audain Art Museum (Whistler, Canada) in 2022 and later traveling to MOCA Cleveland (USA) in 2023, and the 2024 international group exhibition HOKUSAI in Pisa, Italy.

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Also Exhibiting at Mizuma Art Gallery

All Exhibitions
KARASUMARU Yumi
KARASUMARU YUMI Facing Histories Mizuma Art Gallery 3–20 June 2026 Tokyo
MOTOMIYA Kaoru
MOTOMIYA KAORU In Memory of MOTOMIYA Kaoru Mizuma Art Gallery 24 June–4 July 2026 Tokyo
About the Gallery

Executive Director Sueo Mizuma established Mizuma Art Gallery in Tokyo in 1994. Since then, the gallery has continuously presented artists from Japan and, increasingly, from the surrounding region whose works demonstrate distinctive sensibilities, unaffected by fleeting stylistic trends.

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Address
2F Kagura Building
3-13 Ichigayatamachi
Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo
Japan
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
12 – 7pm

Closed Sunday, Monday and National holidays
(1)
Tokyo 2F Kagura Building, 3-13 Ichigayatamachi
Mizuma Art Gallery contemporary art gallery in Tokyo Japan
Mizuma Art Gallery
2F Kagura Building, 3-13 Ichigayatamachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan
+81 3 3268 2500
https://mizuma-art.co.jp/en/

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
12 – 7pm

Closed Sunday, Monday and National holidays
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The art world in focus