Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures so this won't be a full review, but his work so effected me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
His paintings, which had never before been showed in the U.S., have been displayed in a small gallery room on the second floor of the museum since November of 2014. Each painting is captivating in its own unique way, surrealistically showing Ishida in forms of entrapment.
In one painting, Ishida is a waiter with the body of a construction machine. In another, his childhood body is encapsulated, with his large head poking out one side, in a white, rectangular school building while children mill around in rows in the courtyard. In another, Ishida sits in his bedroom, his bed made of a grave, with a body's limbs sticking out from under it.
The exhibit stated that Ishida's work may be interpreted as autobiographical or social. It surely reflects a kind of melancholy, the sort that wraps you up and makes you feel suffocated in your own skin. I don't think it's important if Tetsuya Ishida meant for his work to be about him or about his society because the feelings and issues he expresses are so universal. You can look at one of his paintings and instantly understand that feeling, that certain kind of anguish. I looked, and I thought "I know this, intimately."
Tetsuya Ishida was born in 1973 and died in 2005 at age thirty-two. Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World With a Brushstroke was on view at the Asian Art Museum from November 2014 until February 22, 2015.
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