YOSHITOMO NARA (B.1959)

Yoshitomo Nara arrived at the art scene with the Japanese Neo Pop art movement in the 1990s. His influences stem from childhood, western modern art and traditional Japanese ukiyo-e ("floating world" print). His sculptures and paintings of children and animals are depicted as kawaii, or specifically kowai kawaii (cute yet slightly disturbing). While most of this genre is commonly dominated by crisp computer graphics, Nara's style is of hand-drawn aesthetic using rich and creamy pastel colours. Although Nara explores cute and playful subjects such as schoolchildren and puppies, with enlarged heads, and which has a distinct and endearing quality - they are often menacing. Many of them wield tiny knives or express latent anger in their sidelong glances. His works provokes a sense of ambiguity, conflicting feelings, ranging from childhood nostalgia to disquiet uncertainty.

Quiet, Quiet (Lot 505) is a sculpture made of fiberglass, resin, and wood, which is then finished with a sleek layer of lacquer. In this sculpture, a tower of four disembodied heads that resemble part monkey and part human child, are precariously stacked on top of one another in a three-foot-wide teacup that is filled with a aqua blue pseudo liquid. The sculpture is whimsical and fantastical, reminiscent of scenes from the tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Imaginative but also troubling - the ambiguous facial expressions are not of happiness like the cartoonish style it suggests but of the uncanny variety. Standing over two meters tall, the chubby cheeks and bulbous heads magnify the kawaii effect. Quiet, Quiet may make us smile at first glance but it leaves us pondering what lies beneath the surface of the work. With Nara's Kawaii aesthetic and characteristic pastel colours, Quiet, Quiet is an imaginative and charming sculpture.