Preview: Yoshitomo Nara’s “Greetings from a Place in My Heart” at Dairy Art Centre

Earlier this year, Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles brought us never before seen works by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (covered here). The show was critically acclaimed for his introduction of new materials, including large scale bronze busts and environmentally-friendly installations. Alongside some of these same peices, he will debut a new series "Greetings from a Place in My Heart", opening tonight at Dairy Art Centre in London. Nara will also host a rare artist talk about the exhibit, notably the largest retrospective of his drawings, paintings, and sculpture spanning 30 years.

Earlier this year, Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles brought us never before seen works by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (covered here). The show was critically acclaimed for his introduction of new materials, including large scale bronze busts and environmentally-friendly installations. Alongside some of these same peices, he will debut a new series “Greetings from a Place in My Heart”, opening tonight at Dairy Art Centre in London.

Nara will also host a rare artist talk about the exhibit, notably the largest retrospective of his drawings, paintings, and sculpture spanning 30 years. He brings them together for the first time in bolder and more luminescent layers of paper than before.The roughly 200 sketches offer both insight into the artist’s process and a glimpse into his future as he develops creatively in post-war Japan. These cultural influences range from Japanese manga and Western painting practice to his signature themes, like folk and rock music. Nara’s art has long represented children’s imaginations, adult problems, and our rebellion against the modern world. As society and pop culture changes, so do the issues he addresses in his imagery, constantly forming his artistic expression.

Yoshitomo Nara’s “Greetings from a Place in My Heart” opens on October 2nd at Dairy Art Centre in London. The exhibition will tour to ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark in October 2015.

Topics

Blum and Poe, Japanese art, Retrospective, Yoshitomo Nara

Figurative Art, Gothic Art, Japanese art, Mao Hamaguchi

March 18, 2015

They are "the girls behind the lace." This is how Okinawa based painter Mao Hamaguchi describes the young subjects of her romantic paintings. Her Gothic Art inspired images are painted in a soft and delicate style, where we find Contemporary aristocratic girls peeking through veils or shrouds and lace curtains. The symbol of lace is used throughout Hamaguchi's art. Lace is a sensual fabric, often associated with intimacy and pleasure, as well as wealth, once among a household's most prized possessions. Hamaguchi embraces all of its nuances, using them to emphasize the qualities of womanhood.

Yasuto Sasada’s Drawings of Machine-Inspired Creatures

drawing, Japanese art, Pen and Ink, pop art, Yasuto Sasada

January 2, 2015

Japanese artist Yasuto Sasada, just 27 years old, has already made a name for himself in the modern art and fashion world, through his collaborations with Yohji Yamamoto. Sasada has his own visual language that combines cultural traditions with the future. His detailed pen drawings of creatures mix motifs from modern technology and religion. Their black and white tonality, achieved with a thin 0.3mm pen, is harshly contrasted against bright pink, blue, and green backgrounds. He's created a new form of painting that juxtaposes old and contemporary ideas, taking us into an entirely new dimension.

Studio Visit: Stephanie Inagaki Shares Her Ghostly Charcoal Drawings

Collage, Japanese art, Stephanie Inagaki

January 29, 2016

Japanese artist Stephanie Inagaki's black and white charcoal drawings depict female figures that are not only an embodiment of her roots, but also of herself as an artist and a woman. For the past couple of years, she has been incorporating the Japanese ghost folklore and mythology of her culture into what she describes as "pillars of inspiration"; tall, bold, creative women, often self-portraits, that represent the well rounded woman Inagaki aspires to be. Previously featured on our blog, she likens the figures in her drawings to the Creation and Destruction goddesses like Kali from India or Izanami from Japan, and there is generally an underlying theme of life and death throughout. Inagaki invited Hi-Fructose into her new studio in Los Angeles to give us a preview and tell us more about the direction of where her work is going.

Studio Visit: Hiroki Tsukuda’s Moody Drawings of a Neo-Futuristic World

calligraphy, Hiroki Tsukada, Japanese art, Nanzuka Underground, Neo-Futurism

October 16, 2015

Hiroki Tsukuda's moody and graphical landscapes incorporate elements of traditional Japanese arts and pop culture imagery. The Japanese artist has been residing in Germany for the past few months while his current exhibition, "Colla Max", shows at Warhus Rittershaus Gallery in the city of Cologne. We recently met with him at his temporary open studio space at Autocenter in Berlin, Germany. The project is part of an international residence program curated by Tokyo based art gallery, Nanzuka Underground. Despite the rare opportunity to travel abroad, Tsukada says that it has little effect on his creative thinking. His drawings exhibit a rather neo-futuristic world view, a futuristic re-imagining of the visual and functionality of rapidly growing cities like Tokyo, where he lives. But unlike other neo-futurism artists, Tsukada teeters visually between old and new.

Preview: Yoshitomo Nara’s “Greetings from a Place in My Heart” at Dairy Art Centre

Mao Hamaguchi’s Portraits of Girls Behind Lace

Yasuto Sasada’s Drawings of Machine-Inspired Creatures

Studio Visit: Stephanie Inagaki Shares Her Ghostly Charcoal Drawings

Studio Visit: Hiroki Tsukuda’s Moody Drawings of a Neo-Futuristic World

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