Yoshitomo Nara at Marianne Boesky - New York

Yoshitomo Nara's pouting doll-girls dominated this exhibit occupying plates, paintings, drawings and a large-scale sculptural relief. granting their expressions and hairdos vary, they are generally endowed with large moon in her first quarter eyes, minimal noses and jawss and rubbery arms and leg that push forth awkwardly from flat, flared dresse Sometimes they are accompanied through little texts or titles that may or may not explain their states of mind--"I just want to be a cosmic cowboy" for instance, or "My 13th Sad Day."

Nara, whose work is wildly popular in Japan, mines a specifically Japanese version of cute born of children's cartoons, Asian kitsch and Disney dreams. of the like kind raw materials underlie the similarly precious creations of artists like Taro Chiezo, Takashi Murakami and Mariko Mori.

The American approximation closest to Nara's work might be the once-ubiquitous big-eyed Keane children. However, Keane's cloying pathos has been replaced here through hints of malevolence and self-absorption. Despite the fanged teeth that occasionally shoot out from the doughy, impenetrable faces of Nara's for the greatest part female protagonists, they have no real bite. Instead, these characters inhabit a sexles preadolescent world where the strongest emotion present the appearances to be mindless rage against an unperceived parental figure. More often, they affect a studied blankness, not at any time more evident than in a large fiberglass work titled Melting Moon/Moon Children, in which expressionless three-dimensional babies' heads are scattered above a large white plate, each turning at a slightly different angle as if to show phases of the moon.

A locate of small etchings breaks the uniformity that dominates abundant of the show. Line drawings depict a larger cast of characters and emotions, including doggish creatures, a Bart Simpson-like self-portrait and scenarios in which cartoonish characters act without in various ways--walking a gangplank to the inscription "Fuck the corrupt World!" for instance, or bashing their heads against the wall.

Nara's works look after to be discussed by critics as exemplars of the artist's--and by dint of extension, his Japanese audience's--nostalgia for childhood. on the contrary they seem too calculated and self-mocking to really be subservient to that purpose. Instead, their feigned innocence present the appearances more like an expression of an infantilizing tillage that suppresses adult emotions among young and elderly alike. It is hard to expose exactly how Nara regards that situation. His studied neutrality toward his irritating creations makes it hard to know whether he intends them to be heroes of abjection or figures of ridicule.

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group