Yoshitomo Nara, the Japanese artist whose wide-eyed children and dogs have made him one of the most recognisable figures in contemporary art, will have his first exhibition with David Zwirner gallery this October in New York. ARTnews reported the date on 29 July 2026, headlining the show as Nara's debut with the gallery.

David Zwirner — a major commercial gallery with spaces in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong — announced its representation of Nara in November 2025. Artsy reported the news on 3 November that year, and Artprice confirmed days later that the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery would take place in New York. The gallery's exhibitions page lists Nara in connection with its 19th Street and 20th Street spaces in the city.

Nara had been associated for years with Pace Gallery before the move to David Zwirner. The shift brings a painter whose auction results regularly run into eight figures under the roof of a gallery that also represents artists such as Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Kerry James Marshall.

Alongside the forthcoming New York show, a Nara exhibition titled "Recent Sculpture" is already running at Château La Coste, a vineyard and art destination in Aix-en-Provence, France. David Zwirner's website lists that exhibition as opening on 17 June and closing in October 2026, with a slightly different date range of 26 June through 18 October also appearing on the gallery's homepage. The Château La Coste presentation focuses on Nara's three-dimensional work rather than the paintings and drawings for which he is best known.

For Nara's audience, the October show in New York will be the first chance to see new work presented under the David Zwirner banner. The artist, born in 1959 in Hirosaki, northern Japan, studied at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music before moving to Germany in the late 1980s to train at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His figures — children who glare rather than smile, dogs who stand alone in empty fields — have drawn collectors in Tokyo, Hong Kong and the West alike. At auction, his painting "Knife Behind Back" sold for HK$196 million (US$25 million, including fees) at Sotheby's in Hong Kong in 2019, a result that placed him among the most expensive living Japanese artists.

The specific contents of the October exhibition — whether it will feature paintings, sculpture or both — have not been detailed in the reports published so far.