Yoshitomo Nara: Reach Out to The Moon, Even If We Can’t

Only in Perth – Celebrated Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s first Australian solo exhibition.

The exhibition Yoshitomo Nara: Reach Out to The Moon, Even If We Can’t brings together major sculptural works alongside paintings, drawings, ceramics, and photography from world-renowned artist Yoshitomo Nara.

Nara rose to international prominence in the 1990s for his exquisitely rendered, instantly recognisable portraits of alternately sweet and vicious big-headed figures and melancholic figurative sculptures. His work in all mediums is the result of his innovative distillation of an enormous array of references and inspirations. These include memories of growing up in rural Northern Japan amidst the lingering presence of World War II, political events of the 1960s and 1970s, the sound and graphics of pop, rock and folk music, literature, art from Japan’s Edo and modern period, as well as the new expressionism he encountered while studying and living in Germany in the late 1980s and 1990s. All of which, and more, is finely honed into work that is both intimate and worldly, full of rebellious protest and powerful poise.

Spanning works from 2011-2022, Yoshitomo Nara: Reach Out to The Moon, Even If We Can’t covers a time in which Nara has been processing the devastating impact of the Fukushima disaster of 11 March 2011, which saw his hometown region hit by the combined effects of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor breakdown. In the face of this, Nara found himself unable to make art. He found his way back to his practice through his body as he started making clay sculptures that physically engaged him. From this intuitive process came a renewed focus on three-dimensional forms that then expanded in scale and stretched across other mediums. Taking the guise of (mostly) human heads, the resulting works grew to be a deep and prolonged meditation on the interconnected vulnerability of all life on this planet. Equally, each work is inflected with a kind of cautious optimism that has, in fact, been central to Nara’s work since the 1980s, as he consistently honours the power of individual expression and imagination, especially in the darkest of times.

Dramatically presented in AGWA’s largest gallery space, the sculptural works form a series of interrelated islands that span a range of feeling states. Individually and collectively, they demonstrate Nara’s unsurpassed ability to convey emotional nuance with clarity and moving intensity. The feeling of these works is echoed by surrounding drawings, paintings and ceramics in Nara’s distinctive style, such as Girl with eyepatch and Peace in Your Heart. Some show the development of specific sculptural works, while others, like Love or Nuclear, connect to the anti-nuclear theme he has engaged with for decades now.