San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum. Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke will be on view in the museum’s Tateuchi Gallery beginning Nov. 14, 2014, through Feb. 22, 2015

In 2005 Ishida’s death at age 31 ended a brief but significant career as a painter. While touches of bleak humor temper his work, Ishida’s darkly powerful imagery poses universal questions about the nature of identity and the meaning of life in the modern, post-industrial world. The eight paintings shown in Saving the World with a Brushstroke cross the spectrum of the artist’s major themes: workplace and academic pressures, the search for identity, and social dislocation.

Ishida’s paintings combine fantasy and hyperrealistic detail to often surreal effect. In them home, office, parks and city streets are invaded by mysterious intrusions of bodies, tree limbs and urban debris. A face with short hair, seemingly a self-portrait, appears in most of the paintings, attached to a young man’s body, or sometimes fused with machines and inanimate objects. Unnatural and unnerving, these strange juxtapositions evoke strong reactions from many viewers.

The exhibition title derives from the artist’s words recorded in a notebook at age 25: “I am strongly drawn to saint-like artists. The people who truly believe that ‘the world is saved a little with each brushstroke.’ ” Whether Ishida believed his own works offer any salvation is left for each viewer to consider. But whether by means of humor or pain, they unequivocally force us to confront—and perhaps empathize with—his vulnerable, solitary subjects.

Organized by the Asian Art Museum, Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke is curated by Dr. Laura Allen, curator of Japanese art, and Dr. Yuki Morishima, assistant curator of Japanese art. This is the only venue for the exhibition.