Yoshitomo Nara</a>’s tenth exhibition with the gallery, commemorating thirty years since the artist’s first US show, entitled Pacific Babies, at Blum &amp; Poe in 1995.</p><p>A standout piece from that first exhibition, titled There is No Place Like Home (1995), employs dark humor to explore the complexities of belonging for a young Japanese artist living in Germany on the cusp of international acclaim. Today, that restless uncertainty has given way to a deep-seated sense of connectedness, including attunement to remote places that remind him of growing up in Northern Japan. It was in Sapporo, Hokkaido, when Nara first started using remnants of unused clay to deconstruct his iconic image of the child into misshaped forms that bear traces of his hands, reestablishing his connection to the material and his sense of place. This process culminated in a new series of bronze sculptures, eleven of which are presented for the first time in this latest exhibition. Seen together, these works highlight how far Nara has transformed the kawaii aesthetic into an alternate realm of beguiling misfits.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />

artist Hadi Falapishi’s first solo exhibition</a> with the gallery, Edge of the World.&nbsp;</p><p>Exhibiting Falapishi’s new body of shrewdly deskilled panels alongside photorealistic paintings and bold ceramic sculptures, Edge of the World demonstrates the remarkable range inherent to the artist’s practice as he examines the widely varying possibilities for visual representation. Falapishi’s works cannibalize a vast quantity of reference material—from the Surrealists to Spaghetti Western films—to create a carefully selected composite of signs and signifiers. Deconstructing the vulnerabilities within both the act of viewing and of being viewed, Edge of the World is insightfully humorous, art historically allusive, and stylistically multifaceted.&nbsp;</p><p>Growing up in Tehran as the son of two photographers and later studying photography at Bard College, Falapishi’s now interdisciplinary practice has a unique and expansive approach to the mechanism as medium. For Falapishi, the mechanism that he now activates to make work is the art and cultural historical canon. Deploying imagery from this pool of reference material, the artist situates his and other bodies therein. In his photorealistic paintings in Edge of the World, such as Professional Painter in a Tree on the Sixteenth of September (2024) or Professional Painter in a False Mirror (2024), for instance, Falapishi inserts his likeness into famous compositions by René Magritte while facetiously giving himself the title of “Professional Painter” as both a rebuke and an assessment of the painting style.&nbsp;</p><p>Stemming from the photorealistic paintings, Falapishi’s ceramic sculptures and panels with cardboard allow the artist to playfully explore the psychological state that drives his practice. Rendered in a loose style—with flat colors, crude shapes, and blocky horizon lines—these works borrow from the ethos of the CoBrA art movement in their hue and sentiments prioritizing spontaneity and experimentation. Simultaneously, in a gesture reminiscent of Mike Kelley, Falapishi grants new intellectual and emotional depth to that which might otherwise appear childlike, embedding art historical references in his faux-naïf scenes for those that know to look. Still Life with Cat and Mouse (2024), for example, adds a cartoonish cat and mouse to a still life with a bottle that clearly alludes to the oeuvre of Giorgio Morandi.&nbsp;</p><p>Falapishi leverages the humor that is intrinsic to an unlikely pairing to great effect. Transposing his face onto the bosom of a Roman statue in Professional Painter in a Roman Statue (2024) or inserting a lamppost referencing artists’ artist Martin Kippenberger into a work with simple depth and imprecise lines, Falapishi asserts a truth that has echoed through time with other great storytellers such as William Faulkner. Complex thoughts on the grand nature of existence can sometimes come from the most uncomplicated or unexpected places.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />