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| Tetsuya Ishida’s “Refuel Meal” (1996).© Tetsuya Ishida Estate. Courtesy of the artist, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, and Gagosian |
Painting Japan’s Lost Decade |
Observers of the world economy call the 1990s Japan’s Lost Decade, when the bubble of the 1980s burst and unemployment and bankruptcies rose. As is often the case, adolescents and young adults were especially affected. It was during this time that the artist Tetsuya Ishida began channeling his era’s isolation and anxiety into nightmarish visions. |
Working intermittent jobs, he received little recognition during his lifetime — he died at age 31 after being struck by a train — and his works have not been easily seen by Western audiences. The Gagosian Gallery in New York City yesterday opened the most comprehensive U.S. showing to date of Ishida’s paintings. |
With their recurring themes of loneliness and isolation, rabid consumerism and addiction to technology and automation, his “self-portraits of other people” have aged remarkably well. It’s hard not to see Ishida’s work as a warning from 20 years in the past, a prophecy from an artist who saw where the world was headed with startling clarity. |
