Yoshitomo Nara, the Japanese artist greatest recognized for work, prints, sculptures and merchandise that includes characters derived from the kawaii aesthetic of anime and manga, is now represented by David Zwirner. The Manhattan-headquartered gallery, which additionally has areas in Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles and Paris, will maintain its first solo present with Nara at an unspecified future date in New York.
“I really feel lucky to current the works I might be creating beneath the steering of a gallerist who, although born and raised in a special place, shares the identical technology and the spirit of the period we each lived via—together with its subcultures,” Nara mentioned in a press release. “I’m additionally conscious that this luck rests upon the various layers of fine fortune which have carried me this far.”
David Zwirner will collaborate with Nara’s worldwide agent, an organization known as Equivalence Artwork Company and based by Joe Baptista. The artist was beforehand represented by Tempo Gallery for greater than a decade. David Zwirner’s press launch asserting Nara’s illustration notes that “Tempo Gallery will proceed to have a relationship with the artist”.
“We’re so happy with the whole lot now we have executed for Yoshitomo Nara,” Marc Glimcher, Tempo’s president, mentioned in a press release shared with The Artwork Newspaper. “Wanting again on our 14 years of working collectively, we might not do something otherwise and as such this improvement is slightly shocking, however we perceive that on this surroundings issues occur. We stay timeless followers of the work and sit up for collaborating with the artist on future tasks. We want for an incredible relationship between him and David.”
Nara was born in Hirosaki in 1959 and obtained his BFA and MFA from Aichi Prefectural College of the Arts. He then moved to Germany and studied from 1988 to 1993 on the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the place his instructors included the Neo-Expressionist A.R. Penck. He subsequently lived for a interval in Cologne earlier than returning to Japan in 2000.
“I’ve been a fan of Yoshitomo Nara’s work since I first encountered it in my hometown, Cologne, within the early Nineteen Nineties,” David Zwirner mentioned in a press release. “Nara’s work appeared so radical to me then, because it ran counter to the postconceptual methods that had been pervasive within the artwork world on the time. As an alternative, Nara invited us to ponder a world of vulnerability and real human connection. I quickly came upon that Nara and I didn’t simply share early life in Cologne, but in addition a deep love for music. To me, Nara’s work will not be in contrast to an incredible music: private, emotive, uncompromising and open to experimentation.”
Nara started exhibiting at galleries within the Eighties and, by the tip of the next decade, had been the topic of solo institutional exhibitions in Japan and the US, together with on the Museum of Up to date Artwork in Nagoya (in 1995) and the Museum of Up to date Artwork, Chicago (in 2000). Within the many years since he has change into one of the vital well-known, commercially profitable and immediately recognisable up to date artists on the planet. His works are within the everlasting collections of museums all through Asia, Europe and North America. Latest solo exhibitions have included exhibits on the Albertina Trendy in Vienna (in 2023), the Aomori Museum of Artwork (2023), the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork (2021), a travelling present that went to the Guggenheim Bilbao, Museum Frieder Burda and the Hayward Gallery (2024-25), and the Orange County Museum of Artwork (2025).
“Seeing Nara’s intensive and superbly put in retrospective on the Hayward Gallery in London, earlier this yr, was a real revelation,” Zwirner added. “Once more, I used to be struck by Nara’s huge generosity as an artist; he readily invitations us into his interior universe, whereas difficult us to confront our personal, reminding us that now we have the appropriate to withstand. I’m deeply honoured to welcome Yoshitomo Nara, one of the vital vital and genuine voices in up to date tradition, to the gallery.”
Nara’s work and sculptures are very sought-after within the main and secondary markets, usually fetching six- and seven-figure sums. Earlier this yr the Los Angeles-based gallery Blum, shortly earlier than it closed completely, offered certainly one of Nara’s monumental sculptures for $750,000 at Frieze Los Angeles. At public sale, his costs have been recognized to achieve a lot increased: the secondary-market document for Nara’s work was set at a Sotheby’s public sale in Hong Kong in 2019, when his giant portray of a frowning feminine determine, Knife Behind Again (2000), offered for round 4 instances its excessive estimate, or $24.9m. Since then, 12 extra of his work have offered for eight-figure greenback sums at public sale. Nara’s oeuvre additionally contains much more inexpensive restricted version collectibles and merchandise, which gasoline a thriving resale market within the three- and four-figure value vary.
