For a long time, Japanese decoration has been based on the design of the gentle seasonal atmosphere and scenes expressed through poetry and song.
What I paint is the vast amount of information and shared images of this era that cannot be fully expressed by painting alone.
It is very difficult to preserve the techniques and aesthetic sense that have been passed down and create timeless beauty,
We believe that reflecting the present is a way of carrying on the lineage.
These are difficult times, but we hope you will take the time to view the exhibition.
Once again, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has been involved in the exhibition during this time.

July 2021
Terumasa Ikeda

Like a sprinter who can run 100 meters in under nine seconds, Terumasa Ikeda is always challenging his own records and creating tiny mother-of-pearl pieces.
Digital, pixel, matrix, integrated circuit... words that were unfamiliar to us until just recently are expressed through mother-of-pearl while inheriting traditional Japanese techniques, and the circuits in his brain must shine like rainbow-colored shells.
Raden came across the sea in the 9th century.
It is an art and craft that uses raw materials such as luminous shells and black lipped pearls and decorates the surface of jet-black lacquer. Due to its beauty and rarity, it was favored by those in power, and was treasured by European royalty as a treasure of the Shosoin Repository. It still remains as an art and craft even after more than 1,000 years.
So, who is in power today? Is information the most powerful thing in the world right now?
Terumasa Ikeda has lived through the era of anime and subculture.
When I was a student, I saw the "Futurist Crafts" exhibition at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and felt that a new wind was blowing through traditional Japanese crafts.
As a symbol of the modern era, he incorporates computers and other cutting-edge scientific technology into his designs, honing his techniques and attempting to create tiny mother-of-pearl crafts using shells that shine like lightning.
"I want to create something that only I can make in this era. I want to create something that no one has ever seen before."
The year 2020 saw the global pandemic. Yet young people continue to live life to the fullest.
Terumasa Ikeda is one of them, and will carry on Japan's traditional crafts. There is no need to worry anymore.
I'd love to see what the future holds for him.

Keiko Aono, Ippodo

Light floating on the membrane of reality and fiction

The jet-black membrane covering the box, which resembles an abstract sculpture, reflects the world like a mirror, forming an imaginary interface.
On the surface, the interference light emitted by the shell fragments brings to light an accumulation of intricate numbers and lines. Perhaps the appeal of mother-of-pearl is that it anchors images that tend to drift into the void to physical objects, establishing them as something that "is not there, yet is there."
Lacquer art originated in China and flourished in Japan, and the particularly gorgeous technique of mother-of-pearl is associated with images of tradition, classics, authority, skill, and refinement.
However, while the materials and techniques of Terumasa Ikeda's mother-of-pearl works are rooted in unshakable tradition, the designs are extremely modern, referencing popular games, animation, movies, and other youth cultures shared across borders. For example, the green light of a code flickering on a pitch-black screen, or the
Conductor wiring.
The technology that manipulates light and electrical signals, and the sci-fi visions that are inspired by them, are things that cannot be physically touched with the hand, so to speak, "there, but there is not." They are tethered as physical objects on an extremely thin membrane - a membrane of reality and fiction. The numerous discrepancies and contradictions that intertwine like diffuse reflections between two mirrors make Ikeda's work all the more fascinating.

Vice Director of the Eisei Bunko Public Interest Foundation
Mari Hashimoto