David Zwirner has announced a solo exhibition of works by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, spanning the gallery’s two Chelsea locations at 537 West 20th Street and 533 West 19th Street in New York. Opening in October 2026, the show will be Nara’s first solo presentation with David Zwirner since it took on representation of the artist last November and his first major solo exhibition in New York in nearly a decade.
The exhibition brings together new paintings and drawings, recent sculptures, and early works selected by the artist, tracing four decades of the artist’s practice. His childhood encounters with nature, folklore, and children’s stories in rural northern Japan, alongside a self-built radio that introduced him to popular music, have shaped a visual language he has developed since the mid-1980s. His signature figures, rendered with large heads and wide eyes, were recognized in the 1990s as carriers of raw emotion with the spirit of punk music. Over time they have become cultural touchstones, functioning for many viewers as mirrors of their own vulnerabilities.
New paintings at the gallery’s 20th Street location demonstrate a significant development in Nara’s color palette, with more muted, nuanced tones and increasingly diffuse brushwork. A second group of works introduces a new technique for the artist: figures sketched in colored pencil, then developed with washes of translucent acrylic. Large-format monochrome drawings made with industrial oil-based paint sticks, meanwhile, show the range of his two-dimensional practice. Early works from the 1980s, also featured in the show, will provide a historical counterpoint.
At Zwirner’s 19th Street location, 13 bronze heads from 2024—enlarged 10 times from palm-sized clay prototypes—will be on view. Coated in white urethane paint, the monumental sculptures recall the snow “monsters” of Nara’s childhood winters.
Nara has seen a string of major museum shows over his career. Most recently, a major solo exhibition of the artist was shown at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, as well as Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany, and the Hayward Gallery, London.
