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Gagosian Quarterly

Painting in gray tones of a man in a suit and tie holding an industrial-looking carousel from which identical suited men hang as if on a dilapidated carnival ride

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.

Painting of a person kneeling on the floor with crab claw hands

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, Untitled, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 51 ¼ × 76 ⅜ inches (130.3 × 194 cm)

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, Standing By, 1999, acrylic on board, in 2 parts, overall: 57 ¼ × 81 ⅛ inches (145.6 × 206.1 cm)

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, Untitled, 2004, acrylic and oil on canvas, 17 ⅞ × 20 ⅞ inches (45.5 × 53 cm)

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.