Yoshitomo Nara & graf at the BALTIC, Gateshead, UK, 14 Jun - 26 Oct

Posted on May 20, 2008 at 11:05 AM.

The Baltic will be hosting a major exhibition by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, in an ongoing collaboration with creative design team graf, which began in 2003.

This project is being sponsored by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, The Japan Foundation and Faulkner Browns Architects.

Nara and graf will commence building the installation for this exhibition in early May and can be seen from the level 5 viewing platform. They will continue to explore an ongoing theme of the relationship between the individual and the space they inhabit, a work and it's environment, as well as art and life.

For each phase of the project, the team will create a new wooden structure or 'house' that responds to the particular environment of the exhibition space. The artists will realise their goal on the completion of the 26th house, with a street name representative of the 26th letter of the alphabet. In doing this the artists hope to revive the idea of a narrative.

Nara is well known for exploring the tensions of a hyper consumer culture by using deceptively simple drawing, paintings and sculptures of cute and knowing children with direct gazes and impish grins, inspired by American cartoons, magna, rock 'n' roll and punk culture, that surrounded Nara while growing up in Japan.

Yoshitomo Nara has a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, in Dusseldorf, Germany from 1988 to 1993.

The Baltic also has on display, a series of Nara's commissioned site specific large scaled drawings in vinyl, completed in 2007.

More information for this exhibition can be found at www.balticmill.com