INSTALLATIONS
Hideki Toyoshima on building installations with NaraDesigner Hideki Toyoshima, part of the YNG team, discusses his experiences working with Yoshitomo Nara and building the installations on view in Nobody’s Fool.
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Asia Society Museum’s exhibition includes three large-scale installations. Nara’s formal training focused on painting, but as he began working with collaborators, he became more and more interested in transforming exhibition spaces with installation works.
Today, this interest in collaboration and installation is seen in his current practice of working with designer Hideki Toyoshima as part of a team called YNG. A friend casually introduced Nara to Toyoshima in 2003, when the latter was a member of the Osaka-based design unit graf. They soon began working together, and in 2005, formed YNG—which is perhaps best described as a temporary “family,” to borrow Toyoshima’s description. Just as an organically growing and changing family gathers together for key occasions, YNG comes together for installations. Nara and Toyoshima are the driving forces of this team. Other members of the team, all from Japan, change from time to time depending on what each installation requires. They travel together to the work location, and work and live together until the job is done. After completion, each returns to his or her own home base.
Typically, YNG’s installations are whimsical, shack-like structures that reflect the atmosphere of the artist studio and showcase Nara’s drawings, paintings, and other objects. The team is known to use found materials for construction, and also to recycle, remodel, and reconstitute existing YNG installations so that each presentation is given new life in a new location.
Drawing Room Between the Concord and Merrimack
