Yoshitomo Nara is world renowned for his elegant, cartoon-like paintings and sculptures, which, alongside their appearance in exhibitions around the globe, are featured on postcards and calendars, t-shirts and toys. This ubiquitousness belies the works’ complexity, however, for behind the initial cutesy exterior of Nara’s imagery lies a more sinister inference. His world is a Lord of the Flies vision, devoid of adults and where the children have been left to run riot. Some appear aggressive, eyes narrowed and pumped full of hate, as they brandish tiny knives and puff on cigarettes; others are all wide-eyed innocence, starring unwaveringly out of paintings as if imploring the viewer to rescue them and take them home. A few of the paintings are tagged with graffiti-like slogans, again a contradictory mixture of youthful angst and blunt curses; and accompanying the kids are animals, most prominently a recurring series of dogs, who appear to be waiting, in sleepy melancholy obedience, to be told what to do.
Nara’s world continues to expand, and through a collaboration with graf, the Osaka-based design unit, he has begun to create structures or huts to contain and exhibit his art, developing further the relationship between the work and the space that surrounds it. These moveable structures have housed his work in shows over the past three years, including an exhibition earlier this year at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, and his continued interest in them has culminated in the epic ‘A to Z’ installation currently on show in Japan until the end of October. Consisting of 44 huts, the installation fills a brick warehouse in Hirosaki, Aomori, Nara’s hometown.
The warehouse has long held a fascination for Nara, who grew up nearby. Originally used for brewing sake, and then after World War II to make apple cider, it was empty by the time Ms Yoshii, the owner of the warehouse, suggested Nara hold an exhibition there. He has twice exhibited here already, in 2002 and again in 2005, and with its huge proportions and diversion from a typical white cube contemporary art space, it is the perfect place to hold the mammoth project ‘A to Z’.
Within the installation, viewers are invited to explore in and around the huts, where paintings and sculptures by Nara and nine guest artists are contained. Nothing is predictable, and the work encourages visitors to think as much about the experience of looking as of what they are actually seeing, with some artworks displayed in the ceiling rafters while others appear to be suspended in space. The structures often encourage the viewer to be a voyeur, peering through windows or other access points to discover the art inside. In this setting, Nara’s paintings take on an almost religious quality, his flat, melancholy children seeming more poignant than ever.
The work is not all about creating an imaginary world however, and one section of it includes a wooden structure in the form of a studio. Here we are given a vision of the artist at work, as if he has just stepped out of the frame. A coat is slung on the back of the chair, music plays on a small stereo, empty beer bottles lie abandoned on the floor and the ashtrays overflow. Lining the walls are masses of drawings and sketches, displayed more carelessly than elsewhere in the installation. The room offers hints and tributes to Nara’s inspirations as much as his own working methods: both in the music playing as well as in the toys and other ornaments that fill the shelves. It suggests an opportunity to look behind the curtain, as if we are allowed into the control room of the installation, where it all began. Strangely, instead of shattering the illusory world that Nara has created, this glimpse into his mind only serves to make it seem more magical.
Eliza Williams is a freelance writer and Profiles Editor for Contemporary