Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

Berlin-based painter and sculptor Leiko Ikemura has her first full-fledged retrospective in Japan. The professor at the Berlin University of the Arts presents 145 paintings, drawings and sculptures, many of them direct from her atelier and never seen before. The mysterious figures that inhabit Ikemura’s abstract paintings stem from her interest in “transfigurations” such as those between being and nothingness, and in the relationship between animals and people—or unspoiled nature and human civilization.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, through Oct 23 (listing).