Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage

moCa Cleveland

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• Date Friday, February 02, 2024 - Sunday, May 26, 2024

Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art (moCa) is a dynamic cultural institution that constantly evolves in the city's cultural scene. As a non-collecting museum and the region's sole contemporary art museum, moCa regularly introduces new exhibitions, providing fresh experiences for visitors... more

The first North American retrospective of its kind, Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage presents over 50 works from the past 25 years. Seeking inspiration from his surroundings, Ikeda (born 1973, Saga, Japan; lives and works in Madison, WI) brings attention and inspiration to viewers while sending warnings about the painful reality of environmental disasters. Central to his practice are metaphors of grief and the undeniable aspects of life, including the fundamental forces of Mother Nature. Ikeda’s drawings also reveal human resilience and the ability to rise above devastating situations when it appears impossible.

Organized by the Audain Art Musuem (Whistler, Canada) and curated by Kiriko Watanabe, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator, the show includes several of Ikeda’s renowned monumental works including Foretoken (2008), Meltdown (2013), and Rebirth (2013-16). In each of his works, Ikeda painstakingly constructs worlds that are both profoundly familiar and yet beyond comprehension, inspiring and awe-inspiring in equal measure. The artist created Meltdown and Rebirth as a response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the most devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power disaster in the country’s recorded history.

moCa Cleveland's presentation of this exhibtion marks its United States debut.

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