Get a taste of pop art icon

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Tiki Tiki Bamboooos will perform tonight as part of a celebration of an art exhibit by Yoshitomo Nara.

Lianne Rozzelle A local band, My Ex Is Dead — from left, Aaron Mew, Mindy Mizobe, Mike Nakasone and lani teves — also will perform at the opening event tonight at The Living Room. It runs from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The fiberglass work "Dog From Your Childhood," 1997, also will be on display.

Nara's "Sheep From Your Dream," 1997, is made of fiberglass, resin, wood, lacquer and cotton.

"Yoshitomo Nara: Nothing Ever Happens" A celebration of the art exhibit, including music by Tiki Tiki Bamboooos and My Ex Is Dead 10 p.m.-1 a.m. tonight The Living Room at Fisherman's Wharf, 1009 Ala Moana, second floor $10 general; free for Contemporary Museum members with RSVP 526-1322 Note: The Contemporary Museum's Nara exhibit will be on view today through May 29. tcmhi.org.

I'd been warned that Nara, one of Japan's most popular contemporary artists, was notoriously press shy. So his absence wasn't exactly surprising.

The good news was that his presence could still be felt all over the museum.

The walls of the gallery entry were lined with large off-white platters with varying painted depictions of children like "Little Ramona" — a cartoonish little girl in a long-sleeved pastel shift topped with an oversized head bearing sinister green eyes and a grimace of deep anger. There were more than a few others like her.

Taped on the walls of another room and hastily drawn on envelopes, scrap paper and business letterhead were sketches depicting still more moody kids and strangely placid animals. Expletives and the occasional scrawled message ("underground cliche" or "kind of sucks never having money") explained their feelings.

In a downstairs gallery stood "Light My Fire," a 6-foot sculpture carved from a tree-trunk, rendering another Nara representation of childhood. In this case, a young girl in a pale blue dress, her eyes calm slits, holding out a flaming sphere in her right hand.

And like a welcome best friend after a long day's work, "Your Dog," a giant fiberglass canine with a sleek white coat, red nose and placid grin greeted visitors to the museum's entry courtyard.

More than 150 recent works by the 46-year-old artist are the subject of "Yoshitomo Nara: Nothing Ever Happens," a traveling exhibit that begins a two-month residency at The Contemporary Museum starting today.

An after-hours party celebrating the public opening of the exhibit happens tonight at The Living Room at Fisherman's Wharf. An exclusive animated slide presentation of Nara's illustrations and sculptures will be unspooled. Munich-based Japanese exotica-meets-punk band Tiki Tiki Bamboooos and local rockers My Ex Is Dead provide the live soundtrack.

"Nothing Ever Happens" is an apt title for the collection of Nara works — a mix of alternately bored, placid, angry or impatient children and benign canines waiting for ... something. Adulthood? Revenge? A bone?

Their large heads, cute pastel smocks and pert noses matched with malevolent grimaces, shifty eyes, lit cigarettes and the occasional barely sheathed knife, Nara's visions of children and childhood are as cutesy cartoonish as they are fearfully raw.

Nara is an icon of Japanese pop culture — part of an internationally-beloved cadre of Japanese pop artists drawing part of their inspiration from the popularity of anime and manga. Works by Nara and home country pop art peers like Takashi Murakami began gaining stateside attention in the late 1990s as Japanese animation exports like PokÚmon, Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z became popular.

Moneyed art collectors and kids on allowances quickly took keen interest in Nara's work. And the artist, for his part, cleverly marketed his works to fit the budgets of anyone who wanted it.

These days, original Nara works sell for thousands to such celebrity fans as Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and writer Dave Eggers. Meanwhile, keychains and postcards emblazoned with Nara's bi-polar kids and cute pooches are snapped up by teens online.

T-shirts bearing Nara's progeny have even been sported by characters on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek."

"Nara is interested in sort of breaking down the barriers between high and low (art)," said Contemporary Museum curator Michael Rooks. "But really, the unique work of his that we see in galleries is more about a dialogue with fine art of the past.

"He's interested in the whole history of painting, which is important and not like a lot of other artists working in (the Japanese pop) milieu."

A latch-key child of working parents with two brothers substantially older than him, Nara spent much of his childhood alone, drawing and imagining fictional worlds. Studying Western art history in Tokyo, he was influenced early on by the pale color palette and simplicity of pre-Renaissance Italian painter Giotto.

Studying at the Kunstakademie in Germany in 1988, Nara's initial isolation because of the language barrier inspired dark childhood reflections that would resurface in his later work. He lived and worked in Cologne until 2001.

German, English and Japanese phrases continue to appear in Nara's work, as do elements of Japanese pop culture and the loud punk rock he plays while working in his studio. (The recurring "Little Ramona" character is an homage to punk legends The Ramones.)

"A lot of people perhaps associate Nara's work solely with Japanese pop. But, in fact, it really has a significance across borders and internationally," Rooks said. "It's part of (Japanese pop), definitely. But it's much broader than that, too."

The Contemporary Museum will celebrate the tour's final stop in Hawai'i with "Shaka Nara," a collaborative installation directed by Nara with local artists Ryan Higa, Ryuta Nakajima, Koi Ozu, Cade Roster, David Tanji and Jason Teraoka. Designed and constructed in the museum's John Young Gallery using materials scavenged locally, the installation resembles a sort-of walk-through studio "hut" housing personal effects and artwork by each of the artists.

Tonight's Living Room party is the first of several Nara-related Contemporary Museum events scattered over the next two months. The schedule includes lectures, guided tours, a 'zine fair, film screenings and art workshops (schedule above).

Nara's "Light My Fire," 2001, is a 6-foot work on one of Nara's favorite subjects — childhood.

A live and loud band at The Contemporary Museum on a spring evening would've slammed neighborhood noise restrictions.

"So we just took advantage of the opportunity and arranged for this event to happen the night after the opening," Rooks said. "And just like I hooked Nara up with local artists for the installation, I thought it'd be good for (the Tiki Tiki Bamboooos) to play with a local band like My Ex Is Dead."

Rooks is interested in future linkings of Contemporary Museum exhibits and after-hours culture.

"It's a good way of bringing what we do up here into the city, whether it's Waikiki, downtown, Chinatown or wherever," he said.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8005.

Nara exhibit programs

• "Expression Sessions: Art Workshops for Children," 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, The Contemporary Museum. Workshops with artist Eli Baxter for children ages 5 to 12 and parents. $7 for museum members, $12 general. Reservations required.
• "Nothing Ever Happens" Walkthrough, 1:30 p.m. Sunday, The Contemporary Museum. Exhibit curator Kristen Chambers from The Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, guides a tour of the Nara exhibition. Free with admission. Reservations required.
• "Yoshitomo Nara, Hello Kitty and Other Japanese Pop Merchandising Phenomena," 7:30 p.m. April 12, UH-Manoa Art Auditorium. Lecture by Christine Yano, associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai'i. Free. Reservations required.
• "Nara College Day and 'Zine Fair," 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 16, The Contemporary Museum. A walkthrough of the exhibit led by curator Michael Rooks, activities and a 'zine fair with local 'zine writers and publishers. Free admission with college ID.
• "Superflat Children: Aesthetics And Politics in the Art of Yoshitomo Nara," 7:30 p.m. April 26, UH-Manoa Art Auditorium. Lecture by Marilyn Ivy, professor of anthropology, Columbia University. Free. Reservations required.
• "Expression Sessions: Art Workshops for Children," 10:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. May 7, The Contemporary Museum. Workshops with artist Thomas Wasson for children ages 5 to 12 and parents. $7 for museum members, $12 general. Reservations required.
• "Tokyo Metropolis," various times/venues, May 13-19. Co-presented by Cinema Paradise Film Festival in conjunction with the Nara exhibit, a series of film features, documentaries and shorts tapping into the undercurrent of Tokyo life. Times and venues to be announced.

Call 526-1322 for more information.