David Zwirner presents an exhibition by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, featuring new paintings and drawings, recent sculptures, and earlier works selected by the artist. Spanning the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street and 533 West 19th Street locations in New York, this exhibition is the artist’s first solo presentation with David Zwirner and his first major solo exhibition in New York in nearly a decade.
The nearly one hundred works on view explore Nara’s multidisciplinary approach and his multifaceted worldview. Behind his artistic creativity and his exceptional technical mastery of materials and methods lies an expansive imagination and a deeply personal sensibility originating from his solitary childhood growing up in Aomori in rural northern Japan, at a time when the nation’s rapid economic growth had yet to reach the region — being physically remote and culturally separate from the big cities, it had its own unhurried pace. Memories of snow-covered landscapes and a connection with nature and all living things remain present for Nara.
Another crucial catalyst for Nara’s artistic expression was his revelatory discovery of music. From an early age, he became drawn to the sounds he discovered across the airwaves, on radio broadcasts from the US military’s Far East Network that included folk songs, country, and soul music. Nara had no understanding of the lyrics, but he was in thrall to the rhythms and melodies, the sincerity and longing carried on the music’s often-melancholic tones. Nara absorbed these emotions on a sensory level, allowing them to resonate deeply within his mind and body.
Nara creates art in order to express and communicate what he feels unable to convey in words, and his distinctive body of work has evolved through his ongoing search to identify what is uniquely his: his upbringing in rural northern Japan at a particular moment in time and, above all, his profound concern for humanity, including those outside mainstream society.
In his new work, Nara has furthered his exploration of the possibilities of color expression and accomplishes a sense of humidity and luminosity with his muted, low-saturation palette. His figures on canvas emerge from richly atmospheric layers of soft, earthy colors. Through a process of repeatedly applying paint and reworking it, Nara searches for what is essential. His paintings on styrene boards and wood panels place a renewed emphasis on materiality. He often repurposes materials from his studio to construct supports, appreciating the familiarity of used objects that are present in his everyday life. Collaging pieces of cut fabric, printed papers, and corrugated cardboard from packing boxes, he creates surfaces that become integral to the work, their creases and ridges enriching the physical presence of the image.
In conjunction with the presentation of paintings and drawings at 20th Street, thirteen sculptures from 2024 will be on display at the 19th Street gallery. These monumental bronze heads, coated in white urethane paint, recall the snow-covered forests on Mount Hakkōda, near Nara’s hometown in Japan. Drawing on the beliefs of ancient folk religions, Nara understands the natural world that lies beneath the snow to possess a spiritual essence or a living soul, its elements communicating with each other — tree to mountain, water to stone. Standing like ancient monoliths, light and shadow playing across their smooth surfaces, Nara’s sculptures nurture conditions for serenity and contemplation.
This exhibition coincides with “Yoshitomo Nara: Sentinels of Stillness” at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Three monumental sculptures will be on display through November 7, 2027, inaugurating the Annual West Lawn Series. A major retrospective of Yoshitomo Nara’s work is also due to open in fall 2027 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibit will run through December 12.