A recent creation on exhibition is Light Haze Days/Study, 2020, painted in June during the pandemic. Still depicting the recurrent subject of a little girl, he tried to search for a new stylistic direction. According to the curator, the expression on this painting "exudes a pensive warmth that differs from the distant introspective gaze of his previous portraits, signaling an emotional shift that is affected by the pandemic".
While Nara enjoys great popularity in the art market, as well as contemporary pop culture, he "is not a trendy artist, and the exhibition is more than just social media sensation", says Le Mengrong, a Shanghai art critic. Nara was a role model for many emerging Chinese artists, he says. The root of his success was "a kid who loves to paint, whose style happened to be popular with the audience", to "finding his inner voice, and capturing intricate colors of his mood".
Le is especially touched by the many works on paper.
"They are often small in scale, and created on random materials, such as the back of a used envelope, a torn-up cardboard box and a page on the notepad."
Standing in front of these paintings, one cannot help but feel the artist's passion for creativity and telling his true feelings with his painting brush.
"You see in these paintings the softest corners in his heart, his solitude, weakness, and scorn,"Le says. "The more intricate and trivial these emotions are, the bigger resonance they evoke in the viewer."
