LuxArtAsia: May 2010

Opening - Cutting edge designs exhibition at Sudeley Castle

Sotheby’s first ever outdoor exhibition of cutting-edge Contemporary Design at the partially ruined Sudeley Castle is opened to the public until August 1st. The selling exhibition - arranged in association with Carpenters Workshop Gallery - showcases a series of one-off and limited edition pieces by leading contemporary artists and designers. No Asian works here, but I couldn’t resist showing the amazing pictures. Highlights include the Dutch-Belgian design duo Studio Job’s whimsical Pouring Jug, Marcel Wanders’ delectable Bon Bon Gold chair and Rotterdam-based design collective Atelier Van Lieshout’s polyester Wellness Skull, which houses a fully working sauna a bath/shower facility! Prices will range from £10,000 to £250,000.

Auction - Handiwirman Saputra, Geraldine Javier achieve world records

Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art performed very well at Christie's, bringing in $5.7 million with 92% sold. The top lot was by Italian painter-traveler Romualdo Locatelli -Young Balinese Girl with Hibiscus, which broke all previous records, sold for $773,000. An extremely rare and early Fernando Cueto Amorsolo painting, Lavenderas, sold for $434,000), a new world auction record for the artist. Indonesian auction darling I Nyoman Masriadi had 3 paintings in the top 10 lots, but selling for significantly less ($264,500 and below) than his hay days, prior to the financial crisis. Interestingly, two fairly new comers, Indonesian artist Handiwirman Saputra and Filipino Geraldine Javier (photo), achieved world records. Javier’s Ella amo' apasionadamente y fue correspondida (For she loved fiercely, and she is well-loved) sold for $187,464, nearly ten times its estimate.

News - Winners of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards announced

The winners of this year’s Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA), established by Uli Sigg in 1997, have been announced. They are Duan Jianyu for Best Artist (left), who was praised by the international jury for her highly personal installations and painterly renderings; Sun Xun for Best Young Artist (right), whose works should be seen in the rich tradition of Asian contemporary cinema; and the father of Chinese video art Zhang Peili for Lifetime Contribution.

Auction - White glove sale at Christie's for Asian contemporary art

After a slightly rocky start, where it failed to sell its top lot in the first day’s sales of classical Chinese paintings, Christie’s is back on track with a “white glove” auction (ie 100% sold) for its evening sale of Asian contemporary art and Chinese 20th century art on Saturday. While its first day of sales had raised $54.8 million, with 84.2 percent sold, the ink-on-paper album by painter Shitao that was tipped to fetch HK$120 million ($15 million) did not sell. But on Saturday, the evening achieved $39 million, three times the estimate with a completely packed room and fierce bidding. The top lot was 'String Quartet' by 20th Century artist Chen Yifei, a work which broke a new auction record at $7.85 million. Another two records were achieved when 'Chapter Three "Wreck"' by Japanese artist Tomoko Konoike sold for $264,504, and a work entitled 'Shintenno (Jikokuten, Zochoten, Tamonten, Komokuten)' by Japanese artist Akira Yamaguchi sold for $239,096. Interestingly, the success of Andy Warhol's 'Mao', which sold well over the high estimate at $850,008, indicates that nascent demand for top quality Western contemporary art amongst Asian collectors has potential to grow.

More thoughts on Art HK 2010

You don't often hear people complaining about image overloads, but the visual feast at Art HK 2010 can be overwhelming after a few hours...A few things I noticed:

1. Southeast Asian artists (though present) were generally under-represented (few Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, but pickings were slim).

2. Damien Hirst was everywhere! Several galleries had brought some of his butterflies and skull works. There were also spot paintings and a cabinet display. White Cube even showed one of if formaldehyde, The Inescapable Truth (2005), a floating dove - which repordly sold to an Asian collector for £1.75 million. Asians are always brand name conscious and Hirst is definitely a brand

3. The priciest work on offer is a $12 million Warhol at New York’s Greenberg Van Doren Gallery.

4. Early sales were reported, such as a new Zhang Xiaogang painting — Husband and Wife, 2010, for $1 million to an Asian buyer, two Aya Takano paintings for $125,000 each and Tracey Emin’s 2010 neon installation, I Promise To Love You, for £55,000. But galleries were cautious saying selling was slow with collectors taking their time, making enquiries.

Published - Waste Not, Want Not

A pioneer of ecological design in Thailand, Singh Intrachatoo is internationally recognised for converting other peoples’ leftovers into award-winning furniture. Employing all sorts of scrap materials from building construction waste like wood, concrete debris, aluminium; industrial waste like buttons, used sandpaper and leather; community waste like food packing, solution bags; and even agro-waste like orange peel and lemon grass – he has managed to find a use for them all. Read my story in Fah Thai magazine.

Must See - Art Hong Kong 2010

If you are not attending the fair, Why not? You really should. Now in its third year, Art HK has really arrived and it's the place to see and be seen).

The who's who of Asian collectors, as well as Asian artists are trotting around. In the space of two days, I've already bumped into many including Zeng Fanzhi (with a seven-person strong entourage), and Zhang Xiaogang (alone looking at some of his old pieces on Schoeni's walls), Dr Oei, a notable Indonesian collector and Kim Chang-il, one of the top Korean collectors, and that's only the people I recognize.
The fair has managed to attract some of the top, top art gallery names from around the world and they have brought many truly superb pieces. There is a buzz and energy, I have not seen for a long time.
There are a lot of well known artists, but also plenty of new ones, too. Beautiful installations and sculpture works, nicely break the spaces. The fair is a bit of a maze and you need flat shoes and several hours to comfortably have a good look.
All in all, HK now has a real world class fair (many collectors and gallery owners I talked to say this was the best one in a long time, including Basel). There were a few red dots right at the opening and one gallery is said to have sold 10 pieces within the first hour...

Must See - Wind Shadow @ Esplanade

Catch Wind Shadow tonight at the Esplanade as part of the Singapore Art Festival. It is a mesmerizing performance (albeit a bit slow and repetitive at time) bringing together Taiwan’s venerated choreographer Lin Hwai-Min and his troupe, Cloud Gate, with Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who’s known for his gunpowder paintings and the fireworks at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lin had told Cai he had complete freedom to decide what they should do ("I wanted to see what he saw in his head") and Cai told him "No dance!" The result is a breathtaking visual performance of light and shadows, billowing silks, and tumbling confetti, as if Cai was painting one "tableau" after the other. My favourite parts were the simple, long fall of a silk from the ceiling with the delicate swishhhhh sound; a slide show of Cai's works on moving white flags, a riot of explosions, and the dancers "painting" their own firework painting on the floor. I only wish some of the slow, very repetitive movements would be cut down a bit...

Opening - Yeh Chi Wei @ Singapore Art Museum

A new exhibition retraces the life and works of Yeh Chi Wei, one of Singapore’s lesser known but still important early artists. Through his highly distinctive oil paintings, Yeh drew inspiration from a wide range of cultural sources, such as Han Dynasty carvings and Javanese batik.

But his works also weave in Western art aesthetics, cultural sources and inspirations from his travels. Yeh led the Ten Men Group (who would developed the Nanyang School agenda) on painting expeditions to Southeast Asian countries, and was considered a great source of inspiration and encouragement to other artists. The exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum opens on Thursday.

News - Singapore architecture firm gets two RIBA awards

The Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) has announced the full list of RIBA International Award winners for 2010, and Singapore firm WOHA clocks in two awards: one for the Bras Basah Mass Rapid Transit Station in Singapore and the other for The Met in Bangkok!

Published- In Singapore, Musical Theater That Prefers Its Own Local Flavor

Over the last decade, Singaporean audiences have been treated to regular revivals of Broadway or West End musicals, like “Phantom of the Opera” and “Mamma Mia,” and as their appetite for the Western art form grew, it encouraged a few local theater troupes to produce their own versions. These local productions tended to be performed in English, such as Singapore Repertory Theatre’s “Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress” (2002), based on the life of the Empress Dowager Cixi; or “Sleepless Town” (2009) from Toy Factory Productions, about a 12-year-old living in a make-believe world as an antidote to her troubled life. But this year, the staging of several homegrown musicals in Mandarin with definite Asian twists is attesting to the local audience’s growing interest for musicals with themes closer to home.

In April, the Chinese theater company The Theatre Practice performed “Liao Zhai Rocks!,” a rock ’n’ roll take on the fantastical tales of the Qing dynasty classic, “The Strange Tales of Liao Zhai.” On May 28 and 29, the Toy Factory will stage “Maha Moggallana — a Story of Filial Piety,” based on a famed Buddhist fable about a pious monk and his journey into hell to save his suffering mother. Toy Factory will also stage an updated version of “December Rains” at the end of August. First performed in 1996, this Mandarin musical is set in the 1950s and tells the love story of an idealistic young woman who falls in love with a politically fervent student. Read the full IHT story here

News - Thai film wins in Cannes

Thai film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film traces the dreamlike final days of a man dying of kidney failure as the ghost of his dead wife 'visits' him, along with his long-lost son who has returned in a non-human form. It's the first Asian film to have won the Palme since 1997.

Must See - Pichet Klunchun's Nijinsky Siam @ Esplanade

One of Thailand foremost dancers and choreographers Pichet Klunchun will premiere Nijinsky Siam at the soon-to-be closed Victoria Theatre on Wed and Thurs this week. In 1900, a Royal Thai Dance troupe performed in St Pertersburg , watched by Sergi Diaghilev, the impresario of The Ballet Russes and set and costume designer Leon Bakst. Ten years later, the famed dancer Nijinsky performed at the Opera de Paris Danse Siamoise a ballet inspired by Thai traditional Khon dance though it is yet unclear whether he had actually seen the performance 10 years earlier. Still there are photographs and paintings left of Nijinsky in a Thai dance costume striking pauses seemingly replicating traditional Thai dance postures and gestures, although often reversed because of their difficulty for a Western dancer. Now it’s the turn of Klunchun to enter in a dialogue with Nijinsky, thanks to the use of nang yai (large-scaled shadow puppets) showing his pauses. The choreographer says it was impossible to recreate Nijinsky’s dance, so he’s exploring his own interpretation of what might have happened. This all sounds very intriguing and the performance is already booked to travel to four cities in Europe this summer for various festivals.

Auction - Seminal work by Bharti Kher coming up at Sotheby's

The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own (2006)by Bharti Kher will be auctioned at Sotheby's London on Jun 28. This much talked-about work of art by the leading contemporary Indian artist is a life-size female Indian elephant described as being contoured by the intricately arranged patterns of thousands of bindis that organically swarm across the beast as a second skin. Unlike the proud standing elephant figures usually seen in India's adverts, Kher's elephant is depicted in a crouched position, leaving it open to interpretation as to whether it is in the process of standing up or falling down — a metaphor on India's rapid transformation and the attendant consequences. The work is estimated at £700,000-1,000,000.

News - TWG Tea opening in Tokyo

TWG Tea will today open its first boutique and salon de the outside Singapore. The Singapore-based luxury tea company, which has already made some inroads in markets via London’s Harrods and New York’s Dean and Deluca in the last year, is opening a boutique and salon in Tokyo's ultra-hip Jiyugaoka neighbourhood. To celebrate the grand opening TWG is launching a limited edition of its Tokyo-Singapore Tea though it will only be available there. Selling tea in the already crowded Japanese tea market might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but TWG plans to offer customers its more unusual blended teas. Personally, I have a weakness for their New York Breakfast Tea and London Breakfast Tea and for the afternoon, Napoleon Tea or Number 1 is great, while for an evening treat, the Chocolate Africa (a red tea with real chocolate).
UPDATE (SEP 15) - On the back of its initiatial success, TWG Tea will soon be opening a second boutique in Japan...

Opening - Zhang Huan @ Pace Beijing

Zhang Huan’s recent work is showing at Pace Beijing’s beautiful space. “Zhang Huan: Free Tiger Returns to Mountains” includes ash painting portraying the Chinese tiger - revered but under threat-, along with some cowhide sculptures from his Cow-skin Buddha Face series.

Published - Art Deco jewels performing well at auctions

Art Deco jewels, characterized by their clean cut and overtly angular design, have continued to perform well at auctions in recent years, even at a time when the market was not at its best. That is mainly because there is very little of it left on the market. Many art deco pieces were broken up after World War II, as the style went out of fashion and owners re-used the stones in new settings, Christie's just target middle east buyers in Dubai and there will be some at the HK auction. Read the full IHT story Here

Must See - The Parkett collection @ STPI, Singapore

The Singapore Tyler Print Institute is putting on a comprehensive retrostpective of over 200 rare edition works done for Parkett, one of the best contemporary art publications. The Swiss-based magazine regularly invites artists to collaborate to make work on pages bound into the magazine, as well as with three dimensional works that can be bought by subscribers.
While I love being submerged by Asian art, there is something very refreshing in seeing small format works by artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhold, Ai Weiwei and Tracy Emin. This is the type of exhibition that makes you think: What is contemporary art? I admit some of the works I loved and some left me completely cold, in a 'you must be kidding' frame of mind. Highlights include Hirst's ping-pong ball hovering on the hot air of a hair dryer, Koon's iconic inflatable yellow sculpture, Ai's handy gilded fly swatter, Warhol's absurd photo print of skeletons... but my favorite is Kapoor's spatial funnel contraption made of red stocking inside plexiglass. Unfortunately, photos don't do the works justice. This collection had been shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London in 2001 and travels to the STPI from the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.

Must Buy - Lovely Xue Song bag for Ferragamo

Partnerships between Chinese contemporary artists and luxury houses continue unabated. We’ve had Yang Fudong’s video for Prada, Ai Weiwei’s t-shit for Commes des Garcons, Chen Ke’s bag design for Fendi, it’s now the turn of the Xue Song bag for Ferragamo. The artist is bettern known for his Political Pop collages, but here he's created a limited-edition line of bags, small leather goods and a t-shirt . The eye-catching collection, featuring two fierce tigers, will be launched later this month in Hong Kong.

News - Patek Philippe exhibition coming to Singapore

Patek Philippe’s exhibition, “The Values of a Family Watch Company” is coming to Singapore May 27-30 at the St Regis Hotel. It will showcase over 250 timepieces culled from the company’s 171-year history, including a collection of “presentation watches” made especially for the Royal Family of Siam, includign a pocket watch for Rama V and manufactured in 1891-1897. There will also be Moulins Maria, the Shepherdess (photo), a delicate pocket watch made for the Chinese market around 1785, which chimes hourly and quarterly.

News - Giant Zhang Huan sculpture on loan in San Francisco

San Francisco has a new temporary sculpture by celebrated Chinese artist Zhang Huan. Presented in conjunction with the Shanghai-San Francisco Sister City 30th Anniversary Celebration, Zhang’s colossal Three Heads Six Arms (2008) is on loan, courtesy of the artist and The Pace Gallery, New York, through 2011. Three Heads Six Arms is part of a series of monumental works depicting the fragmented extremities of Buddhist statues. The series was inspired by Zhang’s discovery of religious sculptures that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution for sale in a Tibetan market. He began the series in 2006 shortly after moving from New York City to Shanghai where he stopped his performance art practice and embraced a more traditional approach to artistic creation. His recent work has been characterized by a more overt relationship with traditional Chinese culture and Buddhist iconography. However, he continues to use the body as a primary vehicle for exploring existential questions and expressing emotions, and it is a common thematic thread through his various artworks. Standing over 26 feet tall and weighing almost fifteen tons, Three Heads Six Arms is Zhang’s largest sculpture to date. The sculpture was created by welding together a steel structure and overlaying it with clay, which is then covered with a copper skin.

Auction - Christie's London Asian Week disappointing

Christie’s London Asian Week sold a total $16.5 million, a 26% increase from the same auction period last year. However the results were overall disappointing, given the strong performance of recent sales in New York. The May 11 sale of fine Chinese ceramics and works only sold 64% of its lots, though a rare green enamel-decorated holy water bottle, Ming dynasty, early 15th Century sold for £758,050, the top price of the week. The Japanese art and designs sale of May 12 only sold 65% of its lots, while the Chinese ceramics sales of May 15 sold 76%. The auctioneer noticed a significant presence from Mainland Chinese buyers and a notable numbers of new clients, but they were obviously not scooping up everything.

Auction - Sotheby’s to sell rare Rabindranath Tagore paintings

A rare collection of 12 works by the celebrated Bengali artist and poet, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), will be sold at Sotheby's on Jun 15 in London. This is the first time these paintings, which belong to the the Dartington Hall Trust, a British charitable organisation, have come up at auction.

Born in Calcutta in 1861, Tagore was perhaps the most important literary figure of Bengali literature; he was also the first non-European to win the Noble Prize in Literature. Tagore started painting relatively late in his life and his works are relatively rare to the auction market. Sotheby’s set set an auction record for his work, Death Scene - from the collection of W.G. and M. Archer - which sold for £120,000 in May 2008.

The 12 paintings presented for sale have a pre-sale combined estimate of £250,000.

News - ScreenSingapore to be positioned as post Cannes platform

Plans are afoot for a new international cinema event, ScreenSingapore starting in 2011. Held in June it will be positioned as a post-Cannes Film Festival platform for international film releases in Asia and a platform for Asian films to be marketed to the world. It will also aim to lure the Hollywood studios to showcase their upcoming summer releases with the incentive that the region is the fastest-growing sector in the world. There are some serious movie players behind the event; board members include chair Greg Coote, the chairman and CEO of Dune Entertainment; Ashok Amritraj, chairman and CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment; Dennis Davidson, chairman of DDA Consulting; Wayne Duband of Wayne Duband Consulting; Paul Hanneman, co-president of international theatrical distribution at Twentieth Century Fox; filmmaker Shekhar Kapur; and Michael Werner, chairman of Fortissimo Film Sales.

Opening - He Jian @ HT Gallery in Beijing

Juxtaposing traditional with contemporary is at the heart of He Jian’s practice as he makes the viewers reflect on the fast-paced changes of our society. In his new solo show, Faces Series, opening May 19 in Beijing, the artist continues to paint in the fresco-like, flat style that you find on the mural paintings of traditional Chinese temples, but his characters, young Chinese couples, are dressed in contemporary western clothes making them strangely out of place. The washed-out colours of the paintings reinforce the feeling you’re seeing something old, yet the dress choices of the protagonists and their attitude put them firmly in the present.

News - Art 41 Basel announces site specific installations

This summer the Messeplatz, sited directly in front of the buildings hosting the Art 41 Basel, will once again serve as a stage for art projects in the public space. It will feature 14 site-specific installations by renowned artists, including two of my favorite ones, the Chinese Ai Weiwei and the Brazilian Ernesto Neto. Details on their respective works are not yet know, but Neto is known for his signature sinuous Lycra shapes, which he illed with spices hung from ceilings. like giant fruits, the aroma of each shape enhancing the visual experience.

Opening - Yu Hong @ The Opposite House in Beijing

Fresh from her recent solo show at the Guangdong Museum of Fine Art, Yu Hong is presenting some of her latest works in the six-story-high atrium of The Opposite House, the Beijing boutique hotel designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The artist's works draw on her experiences as a woman in today's fast changing society in China. Familiar figures are painted on silk and carefully imbedded within sheets of resin, each transparent plaque shimmering under light, reflecting waves of luminosity that capture frozen moments of time and memory.

News - Louis Vuitton launches new art initiative

Louis Vuitton has just announced the launch of the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, a partnership between LV and five of London’s leading art institutions: Hayward Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, South London Gallery, Tate Britain and Whitechapel Gallery. The company already regularly sponsors art exhibitions in major institution, but it wanted to celebrate the opening of its New Bond Street Maison with a new project that would extend opportunities to younger, often less privileged people to access the art world. This three year arts and education programme will give young Londoners unique access to the museum directors and curators, artists and collectors who shape the British contemporary art scene. See louisvuittonyoungartsproject.com for details

News - October HK fair renamed

The annual Hong Kong International Art and Antiques Fair will return October 3-6, with a new name: FINE ART ASIA 2010. The four year old fair is aiming to establish itself as the Asian equivalent of the TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s leading fine art fair. It still has some way to go, but its timing with the Sotheby’s Autumn Auctions is a definite plus for potential art buyers

News - Blancpain becomes manufacture

Swatch Group has announced plans to support the expansion of watch brand Blancpain by merging it with movement and component manufacturer Frédéric Piguet, completing the brand’s “verticalisation as a manufacturer”. Frédéric Piguet based in Sentier has been producing movements and components for Blancpain timepieces for many years. With immediate effect the combined entities will now be officially known as the Manufacture Blancpain.

Must Attend - Opening of Singapore Art Festival

Only three days to the start of the annual Singapore Arts Festival and this year I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one. The festival will open Friday with Invitation to Dream – A Fire Garden Installation by French fire alchemists Compagnie Carabosse. The street art troupe is famous for its visually stunning installations of fire landscape, from garlands of flamepots and fire curtains to animated fire structures. The festival will run nearly three weeks. See http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/events
for details

News - Luxury trunk maker Goyard heading for Hong Kong, Singapore

La Maison Goyard, the luxury trunk maker company founded in 1853 in Paris, will open a 780 square foot retail space in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong the first quarter of 2011. The deal was announced by Singaporean company FJ Benjamin which has obtained the rights to retail Goyard in Hong Kong (and in Singapore upon certain conditions being met). The brand is best known for the quality of its hard-sided trunks with its distinctive motif with chevrons juxtaposed to form a Y. The fabric is made of linen, cotton and hemp woven together, and carefully treated in a painstaking manual process in its workshop at Carcassone, France, which also produceS made-to-order pieces. The family business was acquired in 1998 by Jean-Michel Signoles, an entrepreneur who created French children's clothing brand Chipie. He introduced new colors -- such as white, blue and green to brighten Goyard's traditional collection of dark colours. So far Goyard is located in only 10 cities outside its flagship Paris base: Beverly Hills, Boston, Kyoto, London, New York, Osaka, San Francisco, Sao Paolo, Seoul and Tokyo.

Opening - Indonesian contemporary art @ Sbin Art

SBin Art Plus presents Recent Art From Indonesia: Contemporary Art Turn, an extensive exhibition of Indonesian art with 40 artists, both established and emerging. ones These include Christine Ay Tjoe, Ugo Untoro, FX Harsono and Agapetus A Kristiandana. According to the exhibition’s curator Asmudjo Jono Irianto, the exhibition is a visual statement of how the latest state of contemporary art in Indonesia has been affected by the global art scene, yet at the same time retains its distinctive ”localness”.

Opening - Park Soo Keun @ Gallery Huyndai in Seoul

Opening - Indieguerillas @ Willie Valentine Singapore

The Yogyakarta-based husband and wife duo, Indieguerillas, have long shown an interest in Javanese folklore and contemporary urban culture. In their new exhibition, Happy Victims at Valentine Willie Fine Art, the duo comments on our social obsession with brands and consumerism, using a mix of urban aesthetics and traditional Javanese motifs. By lifting and restyling Javanese folklore and wayang (shadow puppetry) Indieguerillas display their sense of cultural pride whilst trying to appeal to younger audiences not to forget their own history.

Must Attend - Art HK fair at the end of May

In the space of three years, ART HK has quickly established itself as an art event to be reckoned with in Asia. Its timing, around the same date as Christie’s Spring auction, means there will be plenty of art lovers in town. This year the international art fair will run at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 27-30 May and will feature more than ten solo shows of artists from all over the world, including a large contingent from Mainland China. Of note will be the solo show of Liu Ye at Sperone Westwater, whose Bright Road sold for US$2.45 million at Sotheby’s in April, setting a record for the artist while exceeding the pre-auction estimate three-fold. Damien Hirst will also present a solo exhibition at White Cube’s special installation space at the fair. A compelling selection of renowned Japanese artists will also be on show, including Yoshitomo Nara at Marianne Boesky Gallery, who leads the generation of Japanese “New Pop” artists that rose to prominence in the 1990s. Returning for a second year to the show, Nara will be showcasing works such as Rock ‘n Roll the Roll, composed of acrylic on wood, among other pieces that exemplify his work as a reflection of the memory of childhood through the use of images of seemingly innocent children and pets.