Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca

 

Yoshitomo Nara - Okhotsk Girl Island, Cape Shiretoko, 2020

 

 

"Picture books tell many stories with one picture, so this kind of system, narratives emerging from a single picture, has had a much stronger influence on my work, particularly my early work..." - Yoshitomo Nara

 

 

I had encountered Yoshitomo Nara's very singular art online on many occasions but never before in the flesh. This exhibition at Pace gave me the chance to inspect it first-hand.  Nara's work appealed to the former illustrator in me, as it has very immediate, graphic sensibilities seemingly derived from a love of Japanese anime traditions, combined with conventional European oil/acrylic painting techniques gained from Nara's art school training in Düsseldorf. This exhibition centres around the large installation at Pace entitled - Pinacoteca 2021. The structure takes its title from the ancient Greco-Roman term for a public art salon, and is an impressive pavilion-like construction designed by the artist himself, in which are contained a range of his paintings and drawings featuring his signature, genderless children exhibiting a range of emotions, bearing surly scowls, or detached and wide-eyed, in dreamy, introspective reveries. I enjoyed the variety of media employed by Nara in the depiction of these children. As well as traditional canvas and wood, he also uses throwaway materials such as cardboard and used envelopes as a ground on which to create his artworks. Elsewhere in the exhibition Nara's children play out his personal obsession with music, brandishing instruments such as drums and guitars, or look completely angelic, yet abuse the viewer in text with the use of the F-word. Others display a political awareness beyond their tender years appealing against the use of bombs, and for the cessation of wars. In the lower gallery are two monumental bronze sculptures covered in a white polyurethane coating which were scaled up from small, palm-sized clay works. These sculptures again reinforce Nara's anti-war sentiments with the titles - Peace Head and Ennui Head. I enjoyed the apparent unsophistication of these sculptures and the traces of the artists' hand retained in the finger marks in the roughly scooped out facial features. I enjoyed the Pop Art sensibilities of Nara's work, and appreciate that his oeuvre much like my own will not appeal to everybody. Validating features though, are the market forces which saw one of Nara's paintings - Knife Behind Back achieve a staggering $25 million at auction in recent years.

Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca

until 15th January

Pace

5 Hanover Square

London

W1S 1HQ