Yoshitomo Nara, ‘Ennui Head’, 2020 

Yoshitomo Nara, Ennui Head, 2020  

Urethane on bronze, Edition AP 1 of 2, Edition of 3 + 2 APs. Presented by Pace Gallery

About the Work

Ennui Head (2020) belongs to a body of large-scale heads that are enlargements of the artist’s hand-carved, palm-size clay sculptures. In the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster – events which had a profound impact on the artist, as the latter took places fewer than 50 miles from his studio – Nara turned toward the cathartic practice of working with clay by hand. ‘I just wanted to put all my energy into hand-thinking,’ he said. ‘I began to work on a massive lump of clay to make bronze sculptures. It helped: I accordingly recovered my hands for painting through this process.’ Displaying the textured surface from Nara’s manipulation of the clay by hand but standing roughly the height of an adolescent child, these sculptures convey a sense of both delicacy and caricatured size. Ennui Head was enlarged in bronze and coated in white urethane, a process seen across his head sculptures, including his ‘Miss Forest’ series of conical heads the artist likens to woodland spirits.  

The title of this work references the French concept of ennui, an existential boredom or dissatisfaction. The figure in Ennui Head wears an ambiguous expression, characteristic of the disarming illegibility of Nara’s figures across the portraits of adolescents that comprise much of his sculptural, drawing and painting practices. Another edition of Ennui Head was shown in ‘Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca’, an expansive solo exhibition at Pace London in 2021.

About the Artist

Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959, Hirosaki; lives and works in Nasushiobara) has an extensive artistic practice that encompasses sculpture, drawing and painting. Nara is a pioneering figure in contemporary art whose signature style – which expresses children in a range of emotional complexities from resistance and rebellion to quietude and contemplation – celebrates the introspective freedom of the imagination and the individual. 

Recent and upcoming shows include a touring exhibition at Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, and The Hayward Gallery, London (2024–2025); Aomori Museum of Art (2023–2024); The Albertina Modern, Vienna (2023); The Art Gallery of Western Australia (2023); Dallas Contemporary (2021); Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2021); Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2021); Tainan Art Museum, Taiwan (2021); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2020); Yuz Museum Shanghai (2022). 

Frieze Sculpture is in The Regent’s Park, 18 September – 27 October 2024. No booking required, it is free and accessible to all. 

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Further Information 

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Digital Guide

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^{Main image: Yoshitomo Nara, Ennui Head, 2020. Urethane on bronze, Edition AP 1 of 2, Edition of 3 + 2 APs. Presented by Pace Gallery}