YOSHITOMO NARA (JAPAN, B. 1959)

Widely recognised as one of Japan's pre-eminent artists and praised for his sweet yet spiritually independent portrayals of solitary figures and animals, Yoshitomo Nara paints with soft colours, brimming black lines and deliberate roughness echoing the spontaneity and vivacity of children's paintings. In their simplistic exterior but brimming with remarkably complex sentiments, his works are deliberately deceptive. Despite some stylistic similarities with saturated colours, animation and fantasy which the average devotee of contemporary arts and those wholly unfamiliar still succumb to the ease and comfort of Nara's works, he has frequently stated that his works are not direct reflections of these contemporary art genres.

The disconnected or troubled youth of today, similar to solitary children of newly minted working class families in the post-war economic development, very much like Nara himself, derive acutely personal connections to Nara and his works, as if Nara's artworks are direct manifestations of their outlook. The accessibility and recognition of his paintings by a wide breath of audiences thus establishes Nara as part of contemporary pop culture itself. Painted in 1995, Q&A is an excellent demonstration of a clear expression of emotion that appeals to the audiences, drawing every person to revisit the past experiences relevant to Nara's depicted subject.