Yoshitomo Nara is a leading global contemporary artist whose practice first came to the fore in the context of Japan's influential Pop art movement. He is best known for sculptures, drawing, and paintings of cute children and animals that on closer inspection appear menacing. The style of his artwork is often associated with popular culture, from manga and anime to the graphics on music album covers, but it equally engages with Japanese visual traditions and Western Modernism.

Nara was born in 1959 in Hirosaki, a rural town in northern Japan. It was at school taking a figure drawing class that he first became interested in art. From 1979 to 1981, he took art classes at the Musashino Art University. He then went on to study at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in Nagakute, Japan, earning his BFA in 1985 and his MFA in 1987. He subsequently moved to Germany, graduating in 1993 from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and setting up his studio in Köln. After serving as a Guest Professor for a graduate course in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998, Nara returned to Tokyo from Germany in 2000.

It was in Germany that Nara began to craft a visual vocabulary influenced by his fascination with Neo-Expressionism and punk rock. During this time, he also painted his first portraits of the child that has become the most recognisable motif in his practice. The child, who Nara noted in an interview with Ocula, is neither boy nor girl, usually appears a sole figure against a plain background, dressed simply. While the figure's cartoon-like features can give it an innocent and 'cute' appearance, it's action often suggest underlying subversiveness to the child: Nara has painted the figure smoking a cigarette, brandishing a knife or crucifix, sporting vampire fangs, or simply staring directly and insolently at the viewer.

Nara's portraits present a fusion of old and new traditions. The child's facial features—widely spaced eyes, stubby nose, slit mouth—are adopted from traditional Japanese Otafuku and Okame theatrical masks, while the poses are associated with anime and manga, and the overall compositions are reminiscent of Edo period ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The artist's sculptures, which for the most part present the child in three-dimensional form, are often coated in a liquid metal that cracks like the glaze on Song dynasty Chinese ceramics.

In 2001, Nara's figures achieved global acclaim and recognition with I Don't Mind, If You Forget Me, his first solo exhibition in a public museum, co-organised by the Yokohama Museum of Art, Ashiya city Museum Of Art & History, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, and Hirosaki's Yoshii Brick Brewhouse. This exhibition galvanised the artist's large fan following and also attracted critical attention from the art world. Around this time the artist came to be loosely associated with an avantgarde group of Japanese artists who gathered together under a newly coined art term: superflat. Other superflat artists include Takashi Murakami and Chiho Aoshima. Superflat came to be associated with the use of bright colours, patterns, Japanese cartoon motifs, and a critique of the country's hyper-consumerist culture. However, Nara has always distanced his work from political or moral purpose, noting it remains first and foremost an expression of his inner feelings.

In 2010, the Asia Society Museum presented Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, the first major New York exhibition of Nara's work, featuring more than 100 pieces, ranging from his early career in the 1980s to his most recent paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and large-scale installations. The Museum of Modern Art acquired a number of the artist's artworks and now holds over 130 of his pieces in its collection. In 2011, deeply affected by the Fukushima earthquake and its aftermath, the artist found himself temporarily unable to work. He subsequently did return to work, and in 2016 the Asia Society recognised the artist by awarding him one of three prestigious Asia Arts Game Changer awards. On the occasion of receiving this award, Nara spoke to Ocula Magazine about his work and the award, noting that 'I know the general public like me but I was always unsure if professionals in the art world appreciate what I do.'

Since 2005, Nara has been based in Tochigi Prefecture in Japan, where he feels that, isolated away from urban life, he is better able to focus on his practice.

Asia Society is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to furthering the understanding of the countries and cultures of Asia. Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in New York, we are an international organization with 11 centers in the U.S. and Asia — Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Sydney, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai and Washington, DC.

The Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK) was established in 1990 by a group of Hong Kong community leaders, led by Sir Q.W. Lee, then chairman of Hang Seng Bank. It is the first overseas center of the 11 centers of Asia Society, which was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in New York as a not-for-profit, non-government educational organization.

As a leading platform for the discussion of Pan-Asian subjects and the impact of global concerns on Asia, we offer educational programs for a  wide range of audience. In 2011, we hosted close to 100 programs, including lectures, exhibitions, performances, film screenings, tours, seminars and conferences. Over 97% of our programs are open to the public.

Stephen Friedman Gallery is proud to present its fourth exhibition of new work by internationally acclaimed Japanese artist, Yoshitomo Nara. He returns to the gallery following recent solo exhibitions at Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Asia Society Museum, New York; Asia Society Hong Kong Center and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland. Along with Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara is considered one of the most important living contemporary Japanese artists. This exhibition consists of new paintings on canvas, paintings on cotton mounted wood panel and works on paper.

While Nara's work is often associated with Japanese pop culture including anime and manga, his output should be viewed through the lens of his childhood in post-war Japan. Nara was born in 1959 in the rural north of the country. A lonely latchkey kid, his early years were informed by illustrated children's books and Western music playing from the radio of a nearby military base. Following a period studying in Germany under A. R. Penck, Nara developed his trademark language and technique, creating complex characters in a deep investigation of childhood sensitivities. In his paintings, figures stare out to us wide-eyed, or smoke, swear and scowl.

Nuanced considerations of alienation, anger and curiosity are undertaken with each work. The apparent naivety of the character and animals he depicts are juxtaposed with slogans and often salty language. The contrast deftly illustrates the angst of adolescent experience. The characters are at once cheeky, vulnerable and threatening. In this way Nara's work crosses cultural and national boundaries in its examination of emotional truth, and essentially human dilemmas.

"This solo exhibition is comprised of ‘paintings' (on canvas), ‘billboard paintings' (patched cotton mounted on wood panel) and ‘drawings' (on paper). Upon hearing this description, most people would think that this sounds like an ordinary exhibition for a painter. However these new paintings on canvas are more painterly than other works I have shown previously. They are marked by a conscious use of colour and subtle layering, which has become important in my recent practice. In contrast to my work on canvas, I originally called the paintings on wood panel ‘billboard paintings', due to their catchy and iconic imagery and the use of flat planes of colour that is reminiscent of the style often used on billboards. Although the ‘billboard paintings' in this show are still evocative of this style, these ones which are rendered on patchwork cotton are much more painterly, with many layers of colour.

Drawing is natural to me. Without being conscious of the eventual audience, I usually follow my emotions and just draw. For this show I am exhibiting a series of drawings that I think of as being mental images without colour. It is probably the first time that I have shown so many of these drawings all at once. I work in sculpture and installation, but for this exhibition I became very conscious of showing myself as a painter." Yoshitomo Nara, April 2016.

Nara's work seamlessly fuses elements of western Modernism with references borrowed from popular culture. Most notably, the artist has underlined the important influence music has had on his practice. Ranging from Rock and Punk to the artist's fascination with folk and amateur music subcultures, his diverse taste has an ongoing effect on both the content and style of his work. When viewed in this context, the lyrics and slogans that accompany the subjects of his paintings can be seen to resemble album covers. In this way Nara reflects on the force that music and pop culture wield during adolescent life and the crucial role they play in forming one's identity. This is particularly pertinent in the global environment that children now grow up in, in which they are exposed to multiple influences from around the world via the internet. The result is a distinctive language that is imbued with an immediate and strangely universal familiarity.

Drawing and painting have long been concurrent and equally important in Nara's practice. In making his return to Stephen Friedman Gallery, Yoshitomo Nara's work is as fresh, relevant and affecting as ever. His re-evaluation of contemporary portrait painting has been critical in Japan and his work continues to appeal to our contemporary sensibility worldwide. In Nara's own words "If you look only at the surface, my work will not really reveal itself to you".

Blum & Poe opened in 1994 in Santa Monica, California with a roster of young Los Angeles and international artists. Now occupying a 22,000 square foot space in Los Angeles, the gallery produces a dynamic program serving both established and younger artists, as well as mounts conceptually rigorous group shows. Blum & Poe was a catalyst for the Culver City Arts District and has played a significant role in the critical reception of Los Angeles artists and their inclusion in public and private collections worldwide. In August 2014, Blum & Poe opened an office and space in Tokyo, Japan, which will function as a base for Asian operations and cement the galleryʼs long-standing relationship with post-war Japanese art.

Pace is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international artists and estates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

Under the leadership of President and CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace is a vital force within the art world and plays a critical role in shaping the history, creation, and engagement with modern and contemporary art. Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy for vibrant and dedicated relationships with renowned artists. As the gallery approaches the start of its seventh decade, Pace’s mission continues to be inspired by our drive to support the world’s most influential and innovative artists and to share their visionary work with people around the world.  

Pace advances this mission through its dynamic global program, comprising ambitious exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, and curatorial research and writing. Today, Pace has ten locations worldwide: three galleries in New York; one in London; one in Geneva; one in Palo Alto, California; one in Beijing; two in Hong Kong; and one in Seoul. Pace will open a new flagship gallery in New York, anticipated for completion in fall 2019. In 2016, Pace joined with Futurecity to launch Future\Pace—an international cultural partnership innovating multidisciplinary projects for art in the public realm.