Stephen Friedman gallery in London is currently showing their fourth solo exhibition with acclaimed Japanese artist, Yoshitomo Nara, covered here. Following his recent solo exhibitions at Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, Asia Society Museum, New York, Asia Society Hong Kong Center and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, “New Works” is the simple title of the current exhibition by one of the most important living contemporary Japanese artists.
Exhibiting concurrently with his solo show at Asia Society, “Life is Only One” (covered here), eminent Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara recently opened his solo show “stars” at Pace Gallery’s Hong Kong location. On view through April 25, “stars” meditates on the notion of the star as both a symbol of hope as well as foreboding. While children are encouraged to strive with cliches like “Reach for the stars,” according to the superstitious, the workings of the cosmos can also set us up for an undesirable destiny. Four-pointed stars appear in many of Nara’s new paintings, with diabolical children playing with them as if they were fickle gods that control our fate.
It’s not manga. This is the starting point of a conversation that Yoshitomo Nara will host today about his debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong, “Life is Only One.” The show opened last night at the Asia Society, named after Nara’s painting “Life is Only One!”, featuring a child holding a skull as he contemplates life. In a recent interview, Nara shared, “When I was a child, the word “life” itself, of course, was a foreign concept. After turning 50, however, and with the deaths of people close to me and with the recent earthquake, I started to think about life more realistically – the limits of life, and the importance of what one can accomplish during that time.”
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.
“All the world is yours…” reads one of the 200 drawings in Yoshitomo Nara’s latest exhibition at LA’s Blum & Poe Gallery, which opened last Saturday. Nara’s solo exhibition is his seventh with the gallery, featuring a vast selection of his signature child characters in a new world of experimental materials. At the heart of the exhibition is an untapped medium for the artist: larger than life bronze sculptures. Cast from hand-sculpted clay models, the busts possess an unearthly quality in their rough interpretation of Nara’s youthful heroes. Read more after the jump.
On October 6, celebrated Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara opened the second installment of his traveling exhibition, “A Bit Like You and Me” at the Aomori Museum of Art in Japan after closing the show’s first stop at the Yokohama Museum of Art in late September. Consisting of new drawings, paintings and sculptures, the show represents a new stage in Nara’s artistic development. Rather than conceptualizing his sour-faced kawaii characters as his own alter-egos, Nara relinquishes his characters as independent entities. “Many people say while looking at my work, ‘Oh, this is me!’ I have come to accept this phenomenon as long as their self-projection is introspective rather than merely visual and superficial. However, a part of me still feels that I am the parent who gave birth to my works. Therefore, my works are ‘a bit like me’ and ‘a bit like you,'” said Nara in his artist’s statement. Take a look at a teaser video from the exhibition and some of Nara’s works after the jump.