After adding Yoshitomo Nara to its roster last fall, David Zwirner will present the Japanese artist’s first show with the gallery at both of its spaces on 19th and 20th Streets in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The exhibition, touted as Nara’s first major solo show in New York in nearly a decade, is slated to open October 29 and will run through December 12.
Nara joined Zwirner after being represented previously by Pace and Blum galleries, and said at the time, “Now, I feel fortunate to present the works I will be creating under the guidance of a gallerist who, though born and raised in a different place, shares the same generation and the spirit of the era we both lived through—including its subcultures.”
The two-site show in the fall will include new paintings and drawings, recent sculptures, and early works selected by Nara himself. “Bringing together foundational works from the 1980s and paintings from 2026,” a press release reads, “this exhibition will illuminate the latest evolutions of Nara’s singular proxies.”
The paintings and drawings will be shown at 20th Street, while 19th Street will be devoted to 13 of Nara’s “sculptural enlargements” from 2024, for which he scaled up palm-sized sculptures that he cast in bronze. About those, the gallery said, “Coated in white urethane paint, the matte surface affording an apparent softness, these large-scale bronze heads recall the snow ‘monsters’ that Nara knew from childhood winters, created by heavy snowfall.”
