Music for the Little Flower

"To adults, childhood seems like an idyllic existence free from worry and care, but to children, nothing happens fast enough. Trapped in a continual state of restless waiting, they squirm furtively at the dinner table or kick the back of your movie seat. Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara's depictions of precocious children and benevolent dogs present childhood as a paradox of perfection and boredom. Suspended in a state of arrested development, his figures are caught somewhere between nostalgic innocence and youthful impatience…
Nara's children, with their oversized heads, milk-saucer eyes and blunt, pawlike limbs, look infantile and defenseless, but far from innocent. They sneak sidelong glances and grimace knowingly, hinting at some secret transgression or imagined subversion. Some even smoke 7igarettes or wield tiny knives. Nara's kids may be up to no good, but they never look guilty. Their faces, at first placid and cute, betray an indignant, yet impotent anger" (Excerpt. from S. Mizota, "Little Triggers", in metroactive, 21 July 2004).