Reviews | Homare Ikeda

Visual Art Source

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:55:22 -0700

Homare Ikeda
at Van Straaten Gallery, Denver, Colorado
Recommendation by Leanne Haase Goebel

There is something playful about the work of Homare Ikeda. His effusive and colorful paintings are filled with layers of organic shapes and symbols. Ikeda’s current exhibition features a selection of large acrylic, wax and oil paintings that are vivid and of the same intense tonality. They often feature clunky, pseudo organic shapes and layouts that are intentionally off-balance and uneven in a Wabi Sabi aesthetic. The work is lyrical and dark. The exhibition also features watercolor, ink drawings and monotypes through which the artist continues to transform nature into art. Exploring contrasts of yin and yang, thick and thin, open and closed, the artist creates atmospheric and primordial vertical “landscapes.” Some appear to be underwater, others ethereal and still others almost microscopic. Ikeda creates art that fuses Neo-expressionism with Pat Steir-like drips, along with Japanese influences through line, form, and composition. The result is a compelling and layered visual exploration.

Homare Ikeda: "Voicers" at van Straaten Gallery - Art Ltd. magazine

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:41:35 -0700

by michael paglia
Jan 2010

The list of figures who have shown at the van Straaten Gallery is an impressive one; owners Bill and Jan van Straaten have recruited famous artists from the ranks of those who have their prints pulled at Riverhouse Editions--a fine printmaking facility the couple also owns--while gallery director William Biety acts as the connection to the local artists. The subject of van Straaten's winter offering was one of Denver's most idiosyncratic painters, Homare Ikeda. Entitled "Voicers," his stunning exhibition was a major event, owing not only to the expected high quality of the works, but also because it was so large. Ikeda is notorious for spending years working on a single piece, so it goes without saying that he's hardly prolific. In light of this, it was surprising that the show included over two dozen pieces, with most of them done in the span of a single year, 2009.

Ikeda's distinctive abstract paintings are downright weird-looking. In works such as Mai, Head and Fish Eye, just three of the monumental paintings included, strange forms and odd shapes, evocative of primitive life-forms, have been densely arranged across the picture planes. These works--and all the others in the show--feature a strange kind of pictorial tension, with Ikeda placing the individual elements in unexpected juxtapositions to each other creating a dynamic sense of imbalance. This same out-of-kilter quality is seen in his painterly technique, where colors are smoothly blended in places, while in others they stand out as staccato bursts that rise up off the surfaces. The paintings are dark, with Ikeda having a taste for rich, deep tones. The sketches, on the other hand, are light, with the abstract depictions on both being their only connection.

Ikeda emerged in the top ranks of Colorado art out of the Neo-Expressionist scene of the 1980s. It was in this context that Ikeda found ready success; his work has been shown throughout the region and has been acquired by several significant collections, none more so that of the Denver Art Museum. It might be tempting to chalk up Ikeda's exotic painterly character to his upbringing since he was born and raised in Japan. However there’s a problem with this interpretation: his work is anything but Japanesque.

The Christian Science Monitor - Art Now, March 3, 1994

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:28:26 -0700

Timeless Worlds on Paper by Marylyn Mason

Rocky Mountain News - Friday 6/8/07

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:33:03 -0600

"Ikeda displays lighter touch in solo show" - by Mary Voelz Chandler

Voelz Chandler: Ikeda displays

lighter touch in solo show

Mary Voelz Chandler

June 8, 2007

Homare Ikeda has built a stellar reputation by making work thick with paint, canvases that contrast dense patches of oil with lighter areas covered with the quirky symbols for which the artist has become known.

But in a show of predominantly new work at Sandy Carson, Ikeda has ventured into a new aesthetic, a more lyrical approach to painting, still reliant on mark-making but more open to a deft, almost glancing touch.

You could call this the Ikeda summer, since the rare solo show for this artist at Carson is just one of three exhibitions featuring his paintings in the coming months. On view through Aug. 4 at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo is a show that is part of that institution's wide-ranging homage to Japan, "Tokonoma: A Place of Simple, Elegant Beauty"; the exhibition "The Transformation of Nature" opens July 27 at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder.

What makes Homare run? Even that question sheds light on a new aspect of his work.

Ikeda, who teaches at Front Range Community College and Metropolitan State College of Denver, traditionally has been known as an exacting artist, someone who holds on to a canvas, reworking and rethinking, sometimes for years. But during a three-month residency at the Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha, Ikeda turned more than prolific, creating some 100 works.

Westword - June 7 ~ 13, 07

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:29:33 -0600

"Fresh Translations

" by Michael Paglia

Homare Ikeda

Sandy Carson Gallery features a must-see solo by one of Denver’s best contemporary artists.

By Michael Paglia

Published: June 7, 2007

Surely Homare Ikeda is on just about everyone's list of the most interesting and important contemporary painters in the area. His work is in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum, and he's had pieces included in shows at any number of venues, particularly the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. But it's been five years since his last solo in town, making Homare Ikeda, at Sandy Carson Gallery, definitely something rare and special. And, I might add, a knockout.

Ikeda was born on Yoron Island, off the coast of Japan, in 1953, and moved to United States in the late 1970s. In the '80s he came to Boulder to study at the University of Colorado, where he earned both his BFA and his MFA. In 1988, while living in Los Angeles, he had his Denver premiere at the now-long-defunct Art Department, one of the true pioneers in establishing the art district on Santa Fe Drive.

The Art Department was beyond funky, a combination hair salon and gallery, but that hardly kept serious people away. In fact, at Ikeda's debut, Dianne Vanderlip, founder and former head curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum, purchased one of his paintings for the museum and got a couple for herself. Cydney Payton and Robin Rule, then partners in the Payton-Rule Gallery, were also there, and they urged Ikeda to move to Denver, since the cost of living was so much lower than in Los Angeles. Ikeda took the bait and relocated here permanently in 1990.