Opening reception: Thursday, January 11, 6–8pm
Blum & Poe will present new paintings by Tokyo-based artist Yoshitomo Nara.
Deeply influenced and informed by formal Japanese and Western painting, manga (Japanese comics), cartoons, Disney and American pop culture, Nara's work expresses a detached, unique and complex psychology in which innocence, melancholy and cruelty are inextricably mixed.
This is Nara's fourth exhibition at Blum & Poe and his first devoted exclusively to painting. In 2000, Nara had one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Santa Monica Museum of Art as well as solo gallery exhibitions in Tokyo, Cologne, London and New York. He will also be the subject of a major one-person exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Summer 2001.