Haus 1992

Leiko Ikemura made this sculpture "Haus" from bronze, and I’m drawn to the way the making is so present. The surface isn’t polished or smoothed, it’s rough, uneven, and almost feels like it’s still in process. Looking closely, there’s this tension between the house's solid form and the way Ikemura has worked the material. It looks almost like a child's drawing of a house, a primal form but the etched lines and textures give it a raw and tactile quality, like the surface of the moon! The crown-like top of the house is like some ancient fortress, or maybe an enchanted forest, you can see hints of faces and forms, like it is alive. Ikemura’s work reminds me a little of Louise Bourgeois, in that the forms are both familiar and deeply strange at the same time. Art is all about this conversation between artists, echoing and responding, always searching, never quite finding the answers, and isn’t that the beauty of it?