Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara presents a startling large-scale sculptural installation created especially for the MCA, as well as a selection of new drawings and a recent painting. The sculptural work, titled The Little Pilgrims (Night Walking), is comprised of 50 fiberglass sculptures of stylized children clad in brightly painted costumes. Culled from his menagerie of imaginary characters, these three-foot tall “sleepwalkers” have a gauze-like cloth surface. Visitors entering the museum will encounter a mass of three-dimensional characters swarming the walls—a strange yet enchanting, surreal vision.

Born in Aomori, Japan, in 1959, and currently living and working in Cologne, Germany, and Nagoya, Japan, Nara is part of a generation of young Japanese artists whose works are informed by Japanese popular culture, primarily manga (comics) and television animation. Recently his work has been included in such group exhibitions as Art/Domestic: Temperature of the Time at the Setagaya Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1999, and The Manga Age at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 1998.

This exhibition is curated by Associate Curator Staci Boris.