Park Avenue Armory Welcomes Yoshitomo Nara + YNG for Open Studio

Yoshitomo Nara. White Riot, 1995. Acrylic on cotton. H. 39 3/8 x W. 47 1/4 in. (100 x 120 cm).

Park Avenue Armory, in collaboration with Asia Society Museum, will host an open studio with Yoshitomo Nara and his collaborative team, YNG. In the Armory’s soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Nara and YNG will reconstruct the large-scale installation work Home, which will include a display of Nara’s drawings and other objects. Nara will also establish a temporary studio adjacent to the drill hall, to create new drawings and other works while the team works on the reconstruction. The Armory will open its doors from 4pm until 7pm on Monday, August 23 through Friday, August 27 so the general public can witness the creative process of the artist and his team.

Once the open studio period has concluded, the reconstructed Home and Nara’s new works will be transported to the Armory’s Upper East Side neighbor, Asia Society Museum. The pieces will become part of Asia Society Museum’s fall exhibition, Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool, which opens on September 9.

“The Armory is a presentation place that pushes beyond the limitations and structures of traditional museums, and working with an artist such as Yoshitomo Nara is a perfect example of how an artist can use our vast space to create large-scale work,” said Rebecca Robertson, President & Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. “We’re thrilled to partner with Asia Society Museum on this project.

From September 9, 2010 through January 2, 2011, Asia Society devotes its entire museum space to a major exhibition of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959), one of the most influential Neo Pop artists working today. More than one hundred works from the last two decades, including drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installation works—many of which have never been exhibited in the United States—will emphasize the relationship of Nara’s art to rock and punk music, an ongoing source of inspiration and prevailing reference point in his work.

Many of Yoshitomo Nara’s works recall the music of rock groups such as Nirvana, The Doors, and the Ramones, and his art has inspired an enormous cult following among youth throughout Asia. YNG—which comprises Nara, designer Hideki Toyoshima, and their team from Japan—is known to repurpose its past works by modifying their sizes, recycling their materials, and/or incorporating additional found materials, objects, and new works by Nara, which gives them a new life in new locations.