Akira Ikezoe’s Frogs and Bears Have Something Urgent to Tell Us
Hyperallergic profiles artist Akira Ikezoe, whose meticulously detailed oil paintings use anthropomorphic animals—frogs, bears, raccoons, and monkeys—to depict industrial workflows and energy infrastructures with dark humor and satire. The article notes his recent inclusion in major exhibitions such as the Greater New York survey at MoMA PS1, last year’s Sharjah Biennial, and this year’s Whitney Biennial, and describes how his studio has been left sparse as a result. It also discusses his “Baby Recipes” series (2022), which turns babies’ body parts into ingredients in comic-style cooking guides, an idea he links to frustrations around raising his three-year-old son. Ikezoe explains that restrictions on nudity in Sharjah prompted a shift from human figures to animals, leading to works that pair diagrams from nuclear power plants with local fauna, such as bears operating Chornobyl and raccoons populating Three Mile Island.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Vandalized Modernism, Creatures With a Warning