How Yoshitomo Nara Found Freedom With His Latest Sculptures

Thirty years ago, Yoshitomo Nara was a young Japanese artist living in Germany emerging on the international art stage. Today, Nara is one of the world’s most famous artists and a market star with a massive following. This transformation did not happen overnight; it was rather a gradual process developed over time. This journey is reflected in his latest solo show at Blum, coinciding with Frieze Los Angeles this week.

Titled “My Imperfect Self,” the exhibition is more than just a presentation of Nara’s experiments with clay; it is also a meditation on his evolving artistic practice after gaining fame outside of his native Japan with his pivotal 1991 painting . The show marks the 30th anniversary of “Pacific Babies,” Nara’s first presentation in the United States held in 1995 at the L.A. gallery, then known as Blum and Poe.

Though the exhibition went on view in mid-January, the formal opening reception was postponed to the end of the month due to the devastating L.A. wildfires. Nara contributed art to the relief efforts earlier.

“My Imperfect Self” features a new series of bronze sculptures, including 11 newly exhibition pieces, in addition to some paintings. These sculptures are “mid-size heads exuding a quirky strangeness and dark charm that defines the artist’s work,” noted art historian Yeewan Koon, the exhibition’s curator. The large pieces cast in bronze were originally made in clay as palm-sized pieces.

“This collection of heads is full of contradictions that lean toward the peculiar and anomalous,” Koon noted in her curatorial statement. “The awkwardness of these heads embraces the possibilities of mischance and imperfections. They form their own gang of misfits. For Nara, this reflects a renewed engagement with the praxis of making—the dynamic interplay between hand and body, craft, and object—which directs his curiosity toward possibilities of incompleteness.”

Reflecting on Nara’s sculpture practice, Koon, who has been working with the artist since 2014 and authored Nara’s monograph in 2020, noted that the artist’s approach to clay has gone from “wrestling” to “nurturing.” She recalled her conversation with Nara about working with clay, which began after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami happened on March 11, 2011, the worst earthquake recorded in Japan’s history. The tragedy claimed nearly 20,000 lives with more than 2,550 people missing. It also hit the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing a nuclear meltdown.

Nara was deeply traumatized by the disaster that hit his home region. For a while, he struggled with painting. He then began to experiment with clay and threw his whole body at a giant piece of clay and began to “wrestle” with it.

“What he really wanted to do was to leave his physical presence onto the clay itself, a way to make permanence feel more solid,” said Koon, noting this was a response to traumatic events. The artist also surrounded himself with a community and did his clay work at his former school rather than his studio.

The transformation of his approach to clay occurred in 2016. Rather than ‘fighting with the clay,’ Nara adopted a ‘gentle motion,’ according to Koon. The result was “more raw, but still intimate and more nurturing,” she noted. First making palm-sized heads, the artist then picked the oddest-looking ones to scale up. The dramatic change in size made them look awkward and imperfect. “He liked that,” Koon said, noting that to achieve perfection, one has to seize control. Imperfection, on the other hand, creates a breathing space that allows the relinquishing of control. “Ultimately, it is about a sense of freedom,” Koon added.

These sculptures, created out of raw materials from his home region, are embedded with a sense of place and roots. “If we look at Nara’s journey, from a sense of displacement to such connectedness, what comes through is that being imperfect is also about acceptance,” Koon noted.

“My Imperfect Self” runs through March 8, 2025, at Blum Los Angeles.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com