HARPA ÁRNADÓTTIR
Easily one of the most important Japanese artists of the recent past, Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) has rocketed to worldwide fame for his darkly whimsical figures that put a creepy twist on childhood ingenuousness: his sullen or dreamy youngsters wear on their vulnerable faces the disappointments, rages and accusatory frustrations of childhood, while still managing to project adorableness. The 1960s manga and anime styles of Nara's own childhood inform the rendering of these disempowered tots, and unlike his countryman and Superflat cohort Takashi Murakami, who has embraced effects of consummate polish and gleam, Nara has leaned the other way. For his 2009 exhibition at the Reykjavik Art Museum Nara went so far as to present his works within the wooden shipping crates in which they had been transported to the museum. Pictures were hung on the outside of the crates, and figures lurked within their interior nooks. This new monograph records and continues the show's themes of containment and transportation; modeled after a children's book, it features windows that can be opened to reveal the youthful figures ensconced within their confinements, waiting to be freed by the participation of the reader.
