Temporary Exhibitions

The exhibition focusing on Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) gathers a selection of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics, to which we should add My Drawing Room, an installation recreating the artist’s studio.

During his training in Germany, in the 1990s, Nara developed a new style, turning to cartoonish representations of children and animals. Far from being kawaii (Japanese for “cute”), his characters look naughty – at times, even threatening.

Unruly and rebellious, Nara’s works evoke the lyrics and the tunes of the folk and rock songs from the 1950s and 1960s, which accompanied historical events like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. As a matter of fact, some of his characters carry anti-war or anti-nuclear messages.

Nara’s paintings are the result of several layers of paint in subtly varied pigments, which the artist applies meticulously throughout the painting process.

The exhibition dedicated to Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth (b. 1940) takes galleries 205, 206, 207, and 209 on level 2 of the Museum.

Hovering between figuration and abstraction, Jungwirth’s works are based on visual stimuli: portraits, press images, landscapes from her trips, and even works by the old masters – Frans Hals, Francisco de Goya, Édouard Manet, and others.

Using colored pencils, graphite, pastel crayons, charcoal, ink and pen, watercolors, and oil paints, Jungwirth transforms figurative images into controlled brushstrokes and blotches. She also picks unusual media, including backing boards from photo frames, old paper rolls, and old account books.

Go to gallery 209 to take a look at Jungwirth’s latest monumental works.

The exhibition Signs and Objects. Pop Art from the Guggenheim Collection can be seen in galleries 201, 202, 203, and 208.

In the 1960s, some of the artists living in the US began to show the interests and tastes of the emerging consumer culture in their work. James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and others drew on advertising, its elements and methods—bright colors, materials like vinyl, mass-reproduction techniques like screen-printing, etc. Other artists, such as Chryssa and Roy Lichtenstein, took signs and simplified graphic elements from comic strips and placed them in a new context, giving rise to different interpretations. Finally, the contemporary artists included in this exhibition offer current looks at such issues as advertising strategies, identity, and the material resources of art, updating some of the keys of Pop art.