Mika Yoshitake

Joanna L. Groarke

Experience the brilliant artist's lifelong obsession with nature and immersion in gardens, a bedrock of her hugely influential work. Yayoi Kusama’s work is the product of an infinite curiosity and obsessive drive to create. Throughout the artist’s long and varied career, there is one persistent yet little-studied through line—her deep engagement with nature. From early sketches depicting flowers at her family’s plant nursery in Japan, to her most recent monumental sculptures of botanical forms poised to take flight, Kusama consistently calls our attention to the patterns, connections, and cycles of living things that are not always visible. KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature is the accompanying catalogue to the first comprehensive exploration of the artist’s enduring fascination with the natural world, exhibited across the 250-acre landscape of The New York Botanical Garden. The exhibition examines her lifelong awareness and attunement to nature, which serves not merely as a source of inspiration, but is an integral source of power for her artistic language. This profound life force pervades all of Kusama’s work, from studies of the molecular to contemplations of the universal, resulting in a transcendent, cosmic nature. Exhibition guest curator Mika Yoshitake, an independent scholar specializing in postwar Japanese art, and Joanna L. Groarke, NYBG exhibitions curator, catalogue co-editors, bring together essays by art historians, curators, and a scientist, who each present unique interpretations of Kusama’s engagement with the natural world. Featuring more than 120 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and archival photographs, including stunning views of the works displayed in NYBG’s gardens and galleries, KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature offers a new perspective on one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists.

Kusama: Cosmic Nature

Yoshimoto Nara

This special edition book on Yoshitomo Nara, one of the most prominent contemporary artists working today, shows the complexity of his work over the past three decades. Thirty years after Yoshitomo Nara rocketed to fame with his Neo-Pop paintings of sinister childlike figures, the artist has deepened his practice. Along with his most recognizable pieces, such as his ceramic figurines and ubiquitous portraits of wide-eyed children, readers will discover his less-known aspects of his works including outdoor sculpture, illustrations on paper, and early versions of his figures. Nara's work is influenced by a passion for punk and rock music, popular culture, manga, and growing up in post-World War II Japan. This special edition book includes a slipcase with 13 booklets featuring the full range of Nara's work. It also includes an LP vinyl record with songs selected by the artist on side A and original music and covers by Yo La Tengo, the American indie rock band, on side B.Published with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Limited Edition

Yoshitomo Nara

Focusing on the themes of abject politics, transcending media, performativity, and satire and simulation, 'Parergon' presents the work of over twenty-five visual artists including Kodai Nakahara, Tatsuo Miyajima, Kazumi Nakamura, Yukie Ishikawa, Tsuyoshi Ozawa and Yukinori Yanagi in an array of media spanning painting, sculpture, duration performance, noise, video and photography.00The title makes reference to the gallery in Tokyo (Gallery Parergon, 1981-1987) that introduced many artists associated with the New Wave phenomenon, its name attributed to Jacques Derrida?s essay from 1978 which questioned the?framework? of art, influential to artists and critics during the period. Parergon brings together some of the most enigmatic works that were first generated during a rich two-decade period that are pivotal to the way we perceive and understand contemporary Japanese art today. In the aftermath of the conceptual reconsideration of the object and relationality spearheaded by Mono-ha in the 1970s, this era opened up new critical engagements with language and medium where artists explored expansions in installation, performance, and experimental multi-genre practices.00The book follows the exhibition at Blum & Poe which ran in two parts from February to May 2019 in Los Angeles.

Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s And 1990s

Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Doryun Chong

Miryam Sas

Michio Hayashi

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Nov. 18, 2012-Feb. 25, 2013.

Mika Yoshitake

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