Yoshitomo Nara’s Retrospective Opening at the Asia Society
Earlier this fall, In Bloom enjoyed the honor of collaborating with the Asia Society to dress their Park Avenue building for a very special event. For the first time, the Asia Society has devoted their entire exhibition space to a major retrospective entitled Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, featuring the Neo-pop work of the Japanese artist. We wanted our floral and environmental designs to celebrate the curious and beautiful quality of Nara's paintings & sculpture. Our proposal for and execution of the design for the Young Patron's Cocktail Party and Patron's Dinner were rooted in the unsuspecting character of the artist's oeuvre.
Yoshitomo Nara, "Too Young to Die," 2001
Based on the exhibition's thematic overtones of slyness, rebellion and punk music, we created a delicate take on toilet paper vandalism by draping the Garden Court trees with crepe streamers.
Our initial illustrations of the effect helped to visualize the final result.
Inspired by traditional taihu rockery, our smaller arrangments for the cocktail tables consisted of driftwood with stricta airplants and coral cocscomb.
In placing the heads of multi-colored dried and fresh flowers on a wooden dough bowl, we aimed to evoke the painter's palette using tones of periwinkle, greens, oranges and yellows.
To compliment the representational, abstract nature of Nara's work, we embedded manzanita branches in Spanish moss with purple thistles, green hydrangea and teddy bear sunflowers for the bar arrangements.
The centerpieces for the Patron's Dinner combined elements from the previous displays to form a cohesive design scheme. We studded manzanita branches mainly with Yoko Ono poms to create an original take on the traditional flower centerpiece.
Check out Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool at the Asia Society going on until January 2, 2011.
Yoshitomo Nara, "The Little Star Dweller," 2006
-Parker Voss
