Artist Spotlight
Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) came of age as a painter during Japan’s “lost decade”—a time of nationwide economic recession that lasted through the 1990s. In his afflictive paintings, he captured the feelings of hopelessness, claustrophobia, and emotional isolation that burdened him and dominated Japanese society. Throughout his career, Ishida provided vivid allegories of the challenges to Japanese life and morale in paintings and graphic works charged with dark Orwellian absurdity.
Launched in 2020, Artist Spotlight is presented once a month as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each Artist Spotlight highlights a work by an individual artist—made available exclusively online for forty-eight hours—together with new editorial features and selected archival content.
Artist Spotlight: Tetsuya Ishida features a significant late painting by the artist. For for more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
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Photo: © Tetsuya Ishida, courtesy Estate of Tetsuya Ishida
Nostalgia and Apocalypse
In conjunction with My Anxious Self, the most comprehensive survey of paintings by the late Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) to have been staged outside of Japan and the first-ever exhibition of his work in New York, Gagosian hosted a panel discussion. Here, Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Tomiko Yoda, Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities at Harvard University, delve into the societal context in which Ishida developed his work, in a conversation moderated by exhibition curator Cecilia Alemani.
Tetsuya Ishida: My Weak Self, My Pitiful Self, My Anxious Self
The largest exhibition of the Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida’s work ever mounted in the United States will open at Gagosian, New York, in September 2023. Curated by Cecilia Alemani, the show tracks the full scope of Ishida’s career. In this excerpt from Alemani’s essay in the exhibition catalogue, she contextualizes Ishida’s paintings against the background of a fraught era in Japan’s history and investigates the work’s enduring relevance in our own time.
Tetsuya Ishida’s Nihilist Realism
Mika Yoshitake details the economic, psychological, and cultural conditions that gave rise to Tetsuya Ishida’s unique strain of Japanese postwar realism.
Tetsuya Ishida: Painter of Modern Life
Yūko Hasegawa explores the fantastical convergences and amalgamations in Tetsuya Ishida’s paintings, their connections to manga and advertising imagery, and the shift that occurred in the artist’s work as he moved from acrylic to oil paint in 2000.
Tetsuya Ishida’s Testimony
Edward M. Gómez writes on the Japanese artist’s singular aesthetic, describing him as an astute observer of the culture of his time.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
Tour
Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self
With Cecilia Alemani
Thursday, October 12, 2023, 5pm
Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York
Join Gagosian for a tour of Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self at Gagosian, New York, led by exhibition curator Cecilia Alemani. This comprehensive survey of paintings by the artist, divided into five thematic parts, is the first-ever exhibition of his work in New York. Ishida emerged as an artist during Japan’s “Lost Decade,” a recession that lasted through the 1990s, and his paintings capture the feelings of hopelessness, claustrophobia, and disconnection that characterized Japanese society during that time—even in the wake of its rapid technological advancement.
Cecilia Alemani inside the exhibition Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self, Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York, 2023. Artwork © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Photo: Eleanor Gibson
In Conversation
Alexandra Munroe and Tomiko Yoda on Tetsuya Ishida
Moderated by Cecilia Alemani
Monday, October 2, 2023, 6:30pm
Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York
Join Gagosian for a conversation inside the exhibition My Anxious Self, the most comprehensive survey of paintings by the late Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) to have been staged outside of Japan, and the first-ever exhibition of his work in New York. Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, will speak with Tomiko Yoda, Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities at Harvard University, in a conversation moderated by exhibition curator Cecilia Alemani. The trio will discuss the societal context in which Ishida developed his work, the artist’s striking representations of the challenges of contemporary life, and his unflinching view of his contemporaries’ inward escape into highly consumable popular media.
Tetsuya Ishida, Prisoner, 1999 © Tetsuya Ishida Estate
New Representation
Tetsuya Ishida
Gagosian is pleased to announce the global representation of Tetsuya Ishida, in association with the artist’s estate. Active as an artist for just a decade, Ishida (1973–2005) produced a compelling body of work imbued with a profound sense of alienation and emotional isolation from the contemporary world. Coming of age during the 1990s, an era of nationwide economic malaise known as Japan’s “Lost Decade,” he made art that conveys anxiety, estrangement, and hopelessness. Inaugurating the relationship, the gallery will present Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self, curated by Cecilia Alemani, the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work staged outside Japan, and his first ever in New York.
Tetsuya Ishida, c. 1995. Photo: © Tetsuya Ishida Estate
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
Tetsuya Ishida
Self-Portrait of Other
October 3–December 14, 2019
Wrightwood 659, Chicago
wrightwood659.org
In a span of just ten years, Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) produced a formidable body of work centered on human isolation and alienation in a world dominated by uncontrollable forces. The exhibition features works that evoke the uncertainty and desolation of a Japanese society drastically altered by the technological advances and successive crises that have affected economies and politics all over the world. This exhibition originated at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, as Autorretrato de otro.
Tetsuya Ishida, Awakening, 1998 © Tetsuya Ishida Estate
Closed
Tetsuya Ishida
Autorretrato de otro
April 12–September 8, 2019
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
www.museoreinasofia.es
In a span of just ten years, Tetsuya Ishida (1973–2005) produced a formidable body of work centered on isolation and alienation in a world dominated by uncontrollable forces. This exhibition—whose title translates to Self-Portrait of Other—features works that evoke the uncertainty and desolation of a Japanese society drastically altered by the technological advances and successive crises that have affected economies and politics the world over.
Installation view, Tetsuya Ishida: Autorretrato de otro, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, April 12–September 8, 2019. Artwork © Tetsuya Ishida Estate
Closed
56th Biennale di Venezia
All the World’s Futures
May 9–November 22, 2015
Giardini and Arsenale, Venice
www.labiennale.org
All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor for the 56th Biennale di Venezia, forms a unitary itinerary with over 136 artists from fifty-three countries, of whom eighty-nine are showing in the Biennale for the first time. The world before us today exhibits deep divisions and wounds, pronounced inequalities, and uncertainties as to the future. The exhibition aims to investigate how the tensions of the outside world act on the sensitivities and the vital and expressive energies of artists, on their desires and their inner songs. Work by Georg Baselitz, Ellen Gallagher, Theaster Gates, Katharina Grosse, Andreas Gursky, Carsten Höller, Tetsuya Ishida, and Taryn Simon is included.
Tetsuya Ishida, Recalled, 1998 © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Photo: Martin Wong
Closed
Tetsuya Ishida
Saving the World with a Brushstroke
November 14, 2014–February 22, 2015
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
about.asianart.org
The eight paintings shown in Saving the World with a Brushstroke cross the spectrum of Tetsuya Ishida’s major themes: workplace and academic pressures, the search for identity, and social dislocation. The exhibition title derives from an observation the artist recorded in a notebook at age twenty-five: “I am strongly drawn to saint-like artists. The people who truly believe that ‘the world is saved a little with each brushstroke.’” Whether Ishida believed his own works offer any salvation is left for each viewer to consider. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the United States.
Installation view, Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, November 14, 2014–February 22, 2015. Artwork © Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Photo: © Asian Art Museum, San Francisco