Voelz Chandler: Ikeda displays lighter touch in solo show

Published June 8, 2007 at midnight

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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.

Much of what is up at Carson fits into that category, and it is easy to see a dividing line, a sort of before- and-after situation that demonstrates the freedom of being focused for three months on nothing but making art.

The acrylic, wax and oil on canvas Memory of Vase, with its generous floral forms and thick tracks of paint, is pre-residency.

Post-Bemis is just about everything else on view here, including a section of the gallery devoted to a series of monoprints/ drawings/watercolors titled with a numerical code. These are small works, but in this more-intimate setting, they are in sum the prize of the exhibition, with their curls, swirls, circles and half-circles, their range of bold and soft colors, and their mix of abstraction with floral forms and other bits of nature-related business that will be familiar to those who follow Ikeda's work.

That's because the artist's attraction to the natural world continues in the new paintings, more spare though they might be. The familiar net/web imagery is still here, along with the explosions of white that to me have always recalled the sun. Splashes of color, the sense of underwater life driven by his childhood on an island off Japan and the practiced use of black continue in the new paintings.

That includes the almost minimal - for Ikeda, anyway - Five Steps, with its gold/orange oar-like shape creating a strong vertical at one side, rich underpainting at the other, in all flanking a black box marked by one of those explosions of bright white. It is at once rich and still, elusive and tempting, attributes that continue in paintings such as Hanabi #5 and Hanabi #7.

Ikeda's work continues to satisfy a viewer's desire to see paintings and works on paper that reflect the skill and care of a veteran, sparked by the optimism of evolution and growth. That there are so many opportunities at one time to follow his path is a gift in a summer filled with promise.

Homare Ikeda

• What: Paintings, monoprints and watercolors, with a memorial tribute of work by ceramist Christine Federighi, who died last fall

• Where and when: Sandy Carson Gallery, 760 Santa Fe Drive; through July 7

• Information: 303-573- 8585; sandycarsongallery.com

In the galleries

¡Quinceañera!

• What: The Museo de las Americas celebrates its 15th birthday by recalling the coming-of-age event that marks a young girl's transition into adulthood. In this case, that's a reception, dinner, silent and live auctions, and a performance by Grammy Award-winner Lila Downs to benefit the institution at 861 Santa Fe Drive

• When and where: 6 p.m. June 15, Exdo Event Center, 1399 35th St. (35th and Walnut streets)

• Cost: From $35 (concert only) to patron seating ($250)

• The Museo saga: Founded in 1992 by Jose Aguayo, the Museo de las Americas has been a key venue here for the art of the Americas, from "Los Supersonicos: Two Chicanos Into the New Millennium," to a standout look at the paintings of David Alfaro Siqueiros, to the sweeping "Never Leaving Aztlan." The institution has had its ups and downs in terms of finances and, at one point, scrapped a plan to remake its current facade and expand the facility for lack of funds. New leadership - Patty Ortiz became executive director in 2005 - has provided a shot of energy and winning exhibitions and programs. An infusion of funds from the city helped, too.

• Coming up: "ConConfection" opens July 12 with work by Lia Menna Barreto of Brazil; Ana Marie Hernando, now living in Colorado; and traditional artists from Mexico. Through July 1, the Museo is featuring the extended "Altar Girls," with contemporary art contrasting santos from Regis University and the Rickenbaugh Collection the Museo acquired earlier this year.

• Information: 303-571-4401, ext. 30; museo.org.

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