Blum & Poe and Pace present On Yoshitomo Nara: A Conversation with author Yeewan Koon & curator Mika Yoshitake on the occasion of Yoshitomo Nara's exhibition at LACMA.
Thursday, October 15, 2020
5pm PT / 8pm ET
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Yeewan Koon is the author of Yoshitomo Nara, published by Phaidon. The volume was made in close collaboration with Nara himself, and it tells the story of his life and career. From his early days as a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf through to the present day, Yoshitomo Nara covers the breadth of his work in painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and photography.
Koon is associate professor and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Hong Kong. She is the recipient of several research awards including a Fulbright Senior Fellowship, American Council of Learned Scholars, and visiting scholarships at Cambridge University and Columbia University. She also works in the contemporary art field as a critic and curator.
Mika Yoshitake is an independent curator with expertise in postwar Japanese art. She earned her MA and PhD in Art History from UCLA, which culminated in the AICA-USA award-winning exhibition Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha (2012) at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles. Recent curatorial projects include Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s (2019) at Blum & Poe and Topologies (2018) at The Warehouse in Dallas, TX. Currently, Yoshitake is guest curator of Yoshitomo Nara (2020), an international retrospective originating at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature (2021) at New York Botanical Garden, and forthcoming exhibitions at M+ Hong Kong (2022) and Hammer Museum (2024). Formerly curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2011–18), where she curated Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors (2017–19), Shana Lutker: Le “New” Monocle, Chapters 1–3 (2015–16), Days of Endless Time (2014) among other exhibitions, she also helped organize Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011) at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and © MURAKAMI (2007–09) at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.