Artist: Leonor Antunes

Taka Ishii Gallery presents “strips, trunks, trees and dots”, a solo exhibition of the works of Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes. This exhibition marks Antunes’s second show at the gallery since 2022, featuring ten new works.

Antunes’s practice is deeply rooted in research that delves into modernist movements, mid-century architecture, and the history of design; in particular, female artists and designers who have been historically overlooked by a male-dominated environment. While unraveling the diverse stories that these female protagonists have followed, Antunes creates unique sculptural pieces that take on a new form. Employing traditional craftsmanship techniques that underpin the realm of craft, her works are characterized by the intricate approach to materials such as wood, metal, and textiles. Antunes invites the viewers to reconsider the built environment and its cultural significance and fosters a dialogue about the potential to shape our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.

Antunes has put together her exhibitions with an awareness towards the architecture and the history of space, and for her second solo show in Japan, she mainly focuses on two designers who had strong ties to the country. One of them is Noémi Raymond (1889-1980), a French-born American artist and designer. Alongside her husband, architect Antonin Raymond, she spent over four decades in Japan, integrating Japanese aesthetics and craftsmanship into modernist designs.​ Her works were influenced by Japanese block-printed textiles of the 1930s and were featured in various exhibitions. The Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Design competition in 1941 awarded her design, but the only credit given was to her husband, Antonin. The same generation as Noémi is Felice “Lizzi” Rix-Ueno (1893-1967), an Austrian designer who moved to Kyoto with her Japanese husband Isaburo Ueno. There, Rix-Ueno immersed herself in Japanese culture and collaborated with local artisans, incorporating traditional Japanese techniques into her designs. She produced works featuring organic motifs and vibrant colors, often inspired by nature, which demonstrated a fusion of Viennese and Kyoto sensibilities.

The first constituent that catches the eyes of the visitors upon entering the gallery will be the linoleum floor that occupies the entire exhibition space. Patterns that reference Noémi’s textile designs have been enlarged, stretched, and recolored by Antunes. It is a fresh intervention inside the white cube with its scale, while utilizing the material regularly used for domestic interior decoration brings a new physical experience. The sculptural pieces “Felice and Noémi” and “Felice and Charlotte” exhibited on the walls are, as the titles suggest, a composite layering and referencing of architecture, furniture, and textile patterns created by the aforementioned designers. The women who have been active in their respective fields in the 20th century are brought together by Antunes to create collaborations between the past and the present. Inhabiting the space to create a constellation, the works invite the viewers to experience the meticulously constructed spatial environments.

Leonor Antunes was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1972. She currently lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the Faculty of Art at the University of Lisbon with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts and Sculpture and subsequently continued her studies at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe. Her recent solo exhibitions include CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2024); Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2023); MUDAM Luxembourg (2020); MASP, São Paulo (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2018); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2016). Antunes represented the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Italy in 2019 and she has also participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 5th Aichi Triennale (2022); the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); the 12th Sharjah Biennial (2015); and the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014).