西澳艺术馆 （AGWA）欣然呈献日本著名艺术家奈良美智（Yoshitomo Nara）在澳大利亚的首次个展。《奈良美智：纵未能及，亦伸手触月》（Reach Out to The Moon, Even If We Can't）将于2023年2月26日开幕，带来重要的雕塑作品，以及油画、素描、陶瓷和摄影作品。

因其精美且辨识度高、亦善亦邪的大头人物肖像和忧郁的具象雕塑，奈良美智在90年代蜚声国际。奈良美智在所有媒介中的作品都来自他对大量文献和灵感的创新提炼，包括在二战阴影下于日本北部农村长大的回忆、60 年代和 70 年代的政治事件、流行音乐、摇滚和民间音乐的声与形、日本江户和现代时期的文学、艺术，以及他在 80 年代末和 90 年代在德国学习和生活时接触的新表现主义，这些均精心融入进艺术家既个人又具普世性、充满了叛逆控诉和强大而优雅的作品中。

《奈良美智：纵未能及，亦伸手触月》为澳大利亚观众呈献奈良美智在2011-2022年间的重要作品。这段时期奈良美智一直在消化2011年3月11日福岛灾难带来的毁灭性影响，他的家乡地区受到地震、海啸和核反应堆故障的多重影响。面对这些，他一度无法创作。但当奈良美智开始接触泥塑时，他通过切身的接触找到了回归创作的方向，从感知过程中发展至三维形式的全新焦点，随后扩大并延伸到其他艺术媒介。（大部分）作品以人头为型态，延伸出对地球上相互连结的生命之脆弱的长远且深厚的沉思。同样，每件作品亦受一种自80年代以来一直为奈良美智作品核心的谨慎乐观态度所影响，艺术家始终以个人表达和想像力的力量为荣，尤其在最黑暗的时代更甚。

Opening on 26 February 2023, 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 will 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.

About the Artist

Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959, in Hirosaki, Aomori prefecture, in Japan’s north. In 1988, after completing a BFA and an MFA at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, Nara moved to Germany where he studied under A.R. Penck at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. He continued to reside in Germany following his graduation and returned to Japan in 2000. Nara held his first solo exhibition in 1984 and since that time has risen to be one of the world’s most respected and popular visual artists.

His work is held by the most important institutions around the globe such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the British Museum, London; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Australia, among others. His first major museum exhibition, I DON’T MIND, IF YOU FORGET ME., was staged at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2001, and in 2020 he was the subject of a touring retrospective exhibition organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Nara’s work has also been included in recent group exhibitions such as STILL ALIVE: Aichi Triennale, Ichinomiya City, Japan, 2022; FRONT International 2022: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA; STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2020; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall and Asia Culture Centre, Korea, 2018; and Japanorama: A New Vision on Art Since 1970, The Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2017.

His work has been on the covers of records by bands such as Shonen Knife, REM, The Star Club, The Birdy Num Nums and many more, and the covers of books by writers such as Banana Yoshimoto, Hijo Tanaka and Riichi Nakaba. In December 2022, Nara released his second collaboration with fashion designer Stella McCartney.