NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner is presenting 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.
To inform his latest works, Nara has selected a group of earlier drawings and paintings to be exhibited alongside them. Two drawings from 1988 show his initial attempts to express his inner self. In the early 1990s, following his move to Germany, Nara began to explore and develop his own pictorial language, and at the same time, under the advice of A. R. Penck, his professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Nara integrated his drawing style into his painting practice. This was a pivotal transition. Nara simplified his compositions and began to apply paint with the same freedom that he used pen and pencil, leading to the development of his own characteristic style and the consolidation of his now established motifs.
Whichever medium or implement Nara chooses, drawing is an assured action, the result of an immediate inspiration. In his new group of large-format monochrome drawings—made this year using industrial oil-based paint sticks—broad, richly opaque lines concentrate his imagery and narrative elements, strengthening their symbolism, and emphasize his fluid delineation. Nara gives direct expression to his imaginative world in these bold drawings, inspired without hesitation by the music he is listening to—a melody or lyric.
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.
Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) is renowned for his distinctive body of work—encompassing drawing, painting, sculpture, and architectural installations—that continues to resonate with a global audience, across borders and generations.
Nara was born in Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan. He received his BFA (1985) and MFA (1987) from Aichi University of the Arts, Nagakute, Japan. From 1988 to 1993, Nara was enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he was taught by German neo-expressionist painter A. R. Penck. Nara has served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (1998); École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris (2003); and Musashino Art University, Tokyo (2006).
Nara has been the subject of solo exhibitions globally since the mid-1980s. His first institutional solo presentation, Cup Kids, was held in 1995 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagoya, in Aichi, Japan. In 1998, the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, presented the first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Further significant solo exhibitions of Nara’s work include Walk On, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2000); Lullaby Supermarket, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2000); and I DON’T MIND, IF YOU FORGET ME., Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan (2001).
In 2003, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland opened Nothing Ever Happens, a major traveling exhibition in the United States. The presentation was subsequently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri; and Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, through spring 2005. In 2004–2005, From the Depth of My Drawer, a comprehensive exhibition including over 200 of the artist’s works, traveled to venues in Japan and South Korea following its initial presentation at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
From 2003 to 2008, Nara presented a series of exhibitions in collaboration with Osaka-based creative design studio graf at venues across the globe, including Yoshii Brick Brew House, Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan (2006); GEM Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague (2007); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2007); and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom (2008). Additional solo exhibitions were held at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan (2006); Asia Society Museum, New York (2010); Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan (2012); and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan (2017).
In 2021, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a special exhibition of work by Nara was organized by the General Association of Chinese Culture, traveling to three venues in Taiwan—Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts; and Tainan Art Museum. A retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work was presented at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2021, before traveling to Yuz Museum, Shanghai, the following year. In 2023, Nara was given his first solo exhibition in Australia, Reach Out to The Moon, Even If We Can’t, at The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, and a large-scale retrospective, The Beginning Place, was held at Aomori Museum of Art, Japan. In Europe, All My Little Words opened at Albertina Modern, Vienna (2023), and a major solo exhibition traveled from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, to Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany, and Hayward Gallery, London (2024–2025). An exhibition of Nara’s monumental sculptures opened in 2026 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. In fall 2027, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will host a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work.
In 2018, Nara opened N’s Yard in Nasushiobara, Japan, a private exhibition space and garden where the artist’s work is continually on display, alongside exhibitions of the work of other contemporary artists.
The artist is the recipient of prestigious awards and honors, including the Nagoya City Art Encouragement Award (1995); New York International Center Prize for Excellence in the Arts (2010); Agency for Cultural Affairs Art Encouragement Prize, Japan (2013); and amfAR Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS (2021).
David Zwirner has represented Nara’s work since 2025. The artist lives and works in Tochigi, Japan.
Work by Nara is held in significant institutions worldwide, including Aomori Museum of Art, Japan; Art Institute of Chicago; The British Museum, London; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Long Museum, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Rubell Museum, Washington, DC and Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan.
