One of the most celebrated contemporary Japanese artists, Yoshitomo Nara makes work across mediums that draws on a range of sources, including music, literature, and childhood memories. Over nearly four decades Nara has developed a signature style that integrates features of Asian and Western culture, reflecting the artist’s movements around the globe.This pair of recent works highlights two essential directions within Nara’s art practice. Painted portraits of solitary children hovering in empty space have been a recurring subject for him. While the children’s wide eyes suggest a youthful innocence, their demeanors brim with psychological complexity, alternately emitting loneliness, anger, and menace.
In 2012, Nicole Eisenman embarked on an intensive venture into printmaking. A prolific and highly influential painter and sculptor, the artist recasts art historical motifs in contemporary settings, often exploring experiences of community and isolation in today’s world. Over the past ten years, Eisenman has immersed themselves in the expansive possibilities offered by the graphic arts alongside their work in other media. This exhibition presents more than 50 works made by Eisenman at three New York–based printshops.
Mitchell first became renowned for his fashion photography. He recently extended his practice of working with models and staging scenes into fine art photography, creating dreamlike vignettes of leisure and play set in the American South. It is, however, a South reimagined: a lush landscape of rustic innocence and simple pleasures that offers Black people refuge, repose, and rootedness. Eich initially gained recognition as a photojournalist. His more recent work provides intimate glimpses of the daily lives of family and friends. Whether candid or posed, these shots use lighting, color, and point of view to transform mundane occurrences into magical moments. They evoke sensations and emotions—the wonder of a child discovering nature or a dip into a chilly river on a hot afternoon. Eich and Mitchell set joyful scenes of relaxation, languor, and personal contentment into the Southern landscape.