A lot can happen in the span of three years: you can change your major and be on a totally different career path, you can fall in love and get married, or you can finish college and move to a different state. Three years can mean something different for everyone and the future has a way of unfolding beautifully. For the Chazen Museum’s artist in residence Ikeda Manabu, the end of a three-year period means putting the final touches on a masterpiece.
Ikeda Manabu is two weeks from completing his three-year residence at UW Madison. He is originally from Southern Japan, where he found his passion for art as a child. He was fascinated by the fantasy and freedom of creation in cartoons and comics. He studied art and began his career of painting meticulously detailed scenes that are vividly realistic and incorporate his vast imagination. His career as an artist was drastically affected by his close encounter with the tsunami in Vancouver, an event that left wreckage, death and trauma in the hearts of the people present. In addition to this tragedy, he looks to reflect in his art other disasters in our modern world, like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Much of his art reflects the natural world in its acutely beautiful yet destructive capacity. Manabu’s biocentric work presents the natural world as a place where humans, though they attempt to harness nature, have very little control. These concepts appear strongly in his new, almost completed piece.
Working in the Chazen basement in a personalized studio, Ikeda uses ink on canvas to demonstrate his ideals in sharp and vivid colors. His work is so detailed that it takes him an average of 8 hours to complete just a 4”x4” square. Even more amazing, his full piece is a four paneled 4’x4’ display. That is a lot of white canvas for any artist, but especially so when such an immense amount of time and effort is invested in such small sections. While Manabu is hard at work, he has a camera that takes an image every minute and a tall ladder to climb for a sweeping perspective of his progress.
His piece involves a rolling tide into a massive tree, evoking ideas of the tree of life, surrounded by mounds of garbage. This destructive scene is offset by hundreds of intricate flowers dancing in the wind and happily attached to the tree. Confronting Manabu’s work consumes you in this moment of chaos while your eyes flash around at the expanse of beauty. Within the soaking, roiling mounds of trash from the tsunami, Ikeda placed images of Bucky and our beloved “Dancing W.” I could see a piece of my own identity mixed among the trash. His work is incredible and captivating.
If you are eagerly awaiting the reveal of Ikeda Manabu’s piece in all its glory, you can get a sneak peek during tours of his studio this week at the Chazen. You can also view his complicated and intricate work titled “Meltdown,” which is on display on the third floor. “Meltdown” is a well known piece that made its debut in Vancouver after the disaster. Madison, get ready to be stunned by Ikeda’s incredible detail, depth of thought and striking colors in his new piece.
