NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner announced the representation of the work of Yoshitomo Nara. In this capacity the gallery will be working in collaboration with the artist’s international agent, Joe Baptista, founder of Equivalence Art Agency, an initiative fostering artist-centered projects. David Zwirner will present a forthcoming exhibition of works by Nara in its New York gallery.
Yoshitomo Nara is renowned for his distinctive body of work—encompassing drawing, painting, sculpture, and architectural installations—that continues to resonate with a global audience, across borders and generations. For Nara, creating art is a deeply personal endeavor that stems from a lifelong conversation with himself—a compulsion born of introspection. Drawing lies at the core of his practice—it is an immediate, spontaneous form of expression for both images and words, conveying thought-provoking statements and messages. Nara’s painting and the wide scope of his sculptural work—made using wood, FRP, ceramic, and, since 2011, cast in bronze—have developed from this direct self-expression. Nara’s unique characters—at times menacing and defiant, but also melancholic, vulnerable, and uncertain—form his central motif, and are, similarly, representations of himself, his innermost thoughts and emotions. Yet paradoxically, they reflect a profound interest in humanity and are widely understood to communicate universal themes of human existence.
The foundations of Nara’s originality lie in his childhood—he was a latchkey kid who spent much time alone, growing up in rural northern Japan, a region subject to rapid societal changes but relatively slow economic growth and overshadowed by the remnants and consequences of World War II. Against this backdrop, he expanded his imagination reading Kenji Miyazawa’s fantastical children’s stories and listening to folk and blues music, introduced to him through late-night US Forces radio broadcasts. For Nara, his singular childhood experiences, and the continuity of their memory, are fundamental to defining the individuality of his work and providing an ongoing source of inspiration for his creativity.
Nara studied painting in Japan and Germany, where he lived and worked for twelve years. Staying first in Düsseldorf and later in Cologne, this was a hugely significant time for his personal and artistic development. His paintings from the 1990s saw the emergence of his iconic child figures, with their characteristically large heads and big, wide-set eyes. Occupying undefined, isolated spaces, their forms enclosed within bold outlines, they can be viewed as psychological self-portraits. And, over the years, as their strong delineation softened, painterly qualities became more apparent, and they have evolved into portraits that captivate audiences with their potency.
In 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated northern Japan. The extent of the loss and destruction had a life-changing impact on Nara. He felt forced to reconsider his role as an artist and redirected his focus toward the affected region, initiating local, community-based art projects. When he returned to painting, his pictorial language had changed—ethereal faces with meditative countenances emerged, multiple touches and translucent layers of color forming their arresting, soulful eyes.
Yoshitomo Nara: When I was a teenager, I didn’t aspire to become an artist—and perhaps that’s still true today. The lives of art students looked so free to me, and it was that sense of freedom that made me want to enter art school. Of course, I devoted myself fully to painting, but it was always within a kind of moratorium-like freedom. More than the freedom inherent in the works themselves, there was freedom in the very attitude of making them.
Even after graduating from art school, my creative philosophy has not been one of “art for art’s sake.” Rather, I believe it is something that exists within the freedom of how one lives. More than the art history or theory I learned in school, it is the spirit of the times—the one I absorbed while growing up and shared with others of my generation—that has shaped my unique sensibility. For example, what resonates with me is not the knowledge contained in hundreds of pages of books, but the reality of what this body has actually experienced. In the end, it is those lived experiences that bring to light the honest words buried within the heavy volumes of written knowledge.
My works are not directed toward others, nor do they depict others. Like self-portraits, they emerge from dialogues with myself—the bare self that takes the form of children or animals lying across the picture plane. In that sense, I believe that viewers who stand before my works also discover themselves there and engage in a dialogue with their own inner selves.
Now, I feel fortunate to present the works I will be creating under the guidance of a gallerist who, though born and raised in a different place, shares the same generation and the spirit of the era we both lived through—including its subcultures. I am also aware that this good fortune rests upon the many layers of good fortune that have carried me this far.
David Zwirner: I have been a fan of Yoshitomo Nara’s work since I first encountered it in my hometown, Cologne, in the early 1990s. Nara’s work seemed so radical to me then, as it ran counter to the postconceptual strategies that were pervasive in the art world at the time. Instead, Nara invited us to contemplate a world of vulnerability and genuine human connection. I soon found out that Nara and I did not just share formative years in Cologne, but also a deep love for music. To me, Nara’s work is not unlike a great song: personal, emotive, uncompromising, and open to experimentation. Seeing Nara’s extensive and beautifully installed retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London, earlier this year, was a true revelation. Again, I was struck by Nara’s enormous generosity as an artist; he readily invites us into his inner universe, while challenging us to confront our own, reminding us that we have the right to resist. I am deeply honored to welcome Yoshitomo Nara, one of the most important and authentic voices in contemporary culture, to the gallery.
Pace Gallery will continue to have a relationship with the artist.
