YOSHITOMO NARA (b.1959)
Born in Hirosaki city, Aomori, Japan, Yoshitomo Nara completed his M.F.A degree at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. He graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany, and remained in Köln for the next seven years. Currently working in Tokyo, Nara is listed as one of the most influential contemporary artists in Japan among artists like Tadao Ando, Takashi Murakami and Issey Miyake. His early works consist of mostly illustration, until the late 1980s when his first sulky-girl portraits materialized. It became his distinctive style to portray these seemingly innocuous children, with oversized heads and big saucer eyes. They are cunningly cute yet corrosive. These characters embrace the experiences of anxiety and fear. Their sneak sidelong glances and grimace knowingly, hinting at some secret transgression or imagined subversion. In late 1990s, he began to create three dimensional work, incorporating a collage of different media. His important solo exhibition includes: “Walk On” (2000, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA); “Who Snatched the Babies” (2002, CNEAI, Chatou, France); “From the Depth of My Drawer” (2004-2005, Japan and Korea); “Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool” (2010, Asia Society Museum, New York, USA). Today his works are in the collection of MoMA New York and MoCA Los Angeles and many other well-known museums in the world.