Body Fluids

Tetsuya Ishida was born in the Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan in 1973. Tragically, he was killed in a train accident in 2005. The more splendid it was, the more regrettable the loss. During the 31 years of his life, he witnessed the economic miracle in postwar Japan during the 60s to 80s and the burst of the economic bubble in the 90s. High pressure at workplace, long working hours, discriminatory social hierarchy and institution were the typical phenomena in the Japanese society. The young Tetsuya Ishida used his razor-sharp sensibilities, exquisite brushwork, surrealistic world-view, and an empathetic heart to reveal the truth about the conditions of the contemporary Japanese people. In the 100 or so works that he created before he left the world, majority of the protagonists are young people, students, or white-collar salaryman. Their bodies are inevitably restrained by various objects. At times, they are even absorbed and became parts of the transportation vehicles, machines, and household items – these are metaphors for their fate in servitude and the inability to determine their own destiny.

Although the paintings of Tetsuya Ishida convey the feeling of melancholy and loneliness, they are the artist's way to subtly express his sympathy and concern. He once said, "Pain, misery, tragedy, distress, and loneliness of other human beings are the emotions that I can intensely feel. In my own way, I digest them and represent them again." The sorrowful characters who are at a loss in an era of indifference and detachment provoke the viewers to reflect on the society and their current states of beings. Ishida believed that every single brushstroke reveal different issues hidden in our society, and salvation is attained, little by little, through his paintings.