Focus on the Masters: Ichiro Irie

Join us at the Museum of Ventura County on Sunday, August 18, 2019 from 3 p.m. for 4:30 p.m. for a Conversation with Ichiro Irie. Ichiro Irie was born in Japan and reared in the Westside of Los Angeles. He is an artist, independent curator and art educator.  He studied film and communications at UCSB, earned an M.F.A. at Claremont Graduate University and was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship where he completed a residency in Mexico City.  In 2009, Ichiro opened an artist-run space in Los Angeles called JAUS (pronounced “house”), that deliberately refused to limit itself to any specific genre, aesthetic or theoretical parameter.

As an interdisciplinary artist, Ichiro’s work explores a wide range of issues and spans a variety of media. His meticulously detailed ink drawings of junkyards, crashed cars and other unexpected sites of contemporary destruction, pair brilliant technical facility with a brooding interest in the darker cultural dimensions of consumption and waste. He brings new meaning to conventional items such as paper clips, staples, screws, poster putty, and hair clips by placing them in the foreground of the composition. This idea of transformation and humor are an important theme in the artist’s work, because “it allows the possibility for subtle defiance, active participation and pleasure within a set of parameters, even if it is only within my tiny corner of the world”.

Irie currently lives and works in Los Angeles and teaches at Oxnard College and Ryman Arts on the campus Otis College of Art & Design. Irie has organized over 40 exhibitions and has exhibited his work internationally in galleries and museums including, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, London, Warsaw, Frankfurt, Berlin, Rotterdam and Buenos Aires.

To learn more about Ichiro, visit http://www.ichiro-irie.com/

Special invitation to educators and students: The Artist Spotlight is open to students attending as a class assignment free of charge. FOTM is happy to assist with tracking attendance and sign-in sheets. Reservations required. To RSVP visit www.FocusOnTheMasters.com or call 805.653.2501.

Sponsored by Paula Spellman
Season Sponsors:

Dennis Mitchell at I Capelli Salon, Passion Flowers,

Peterson Graphics, Museum of Ventura County

AfterGlow Fundraising Event: The public is welcome to join the artist for a celebratory fundraising dinner at the Oxnard home of Thomas & Laura Cook. Paid reservations are required prior to August 12. We expect this AfterGlow to sell out. Maps will be given to paid guests at the interview.

$30 FOTM members, $40 Non-members.