albertz benda is pleased to present an exhibition of works by the Japanese artist and cultural icon Tadanori Yokoo spanning three decades of his 60-year career. Entitled All or Nothing, the exhibition features a curated selection of paintings from several key series, providing a rare opportunity to view the artist’s multidimensional and perpetually ambitious oeuvre. Drawing upon lived experience and his own ever-expanding iconography, Yokoo’s paintings reference a range of subjects including historical events, underground cinema, Zen Buddhist philosophy, and quotidian, yet dream- like, streetscapes. With conscious fluidity, Yokoo uses a broad array of painterly techniques merging personal reality with the imagined by demonstrating his masterful storytelling and keen observations of contemporary society. All or Nothing is on view from January 25th through March 2nd, 2024; many of these paintings will be shown for the first time in New York.
Yokoo’s ground-breaking art practice embraces graphic design, illustration, printmaking, and painting. At the epicenter of the 1960s and 70s underground Japanese avant-garde scene, he gained worldwide critical acclaim for his graphic art. Through an idiosyncratic and provocative lens, Yokoo collaborated with many of the most influential figures in the Japanese postwar cultural landscape such as Mishima Yukio, Hijikata Tatsumi, and Issey Miyake. His work expanded internationally with his well-known poster and album art for musical legends such as Miles Davis and the Beatles, which he felt directly contributed to the start of a revolution amongst the youth culture of the time. Following decades of a multilayered approach to artmaking, Yokoo publicly devoted himself to painting full-time after seeing a Picasso exhibition at the MoMA in the 1980s. The artist continues to exhibit his work yearly in prominent museums throughout Japan and across the globe.
The varied selection of paintings in this exhibition demonstrates Yokoo’s mastery of weaving together seemingly disparate elements while continually expanding his powerful visual canon. Refined over many decades of his long career, Yokoo’s highly distinct iconography and handling of recurring motifs reflect both subjective cultural observations and expressive internal realities. The paintings included in All or Nothing provide the rare opportunity to view a diverse sampling of Yokoo’s works within one setting, reflecting the depth and versatility of this seminal artist.
