Yoshitomo Nara at Château La Coste — six monumental white heads, enlarged from small clay models, now inhabit the Provençal landscape

Installed on the lawn leading towards Château La Coste’s Art Centre, Recent Sculpture brings together six works by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. First modelled by hand as small clay heads, they were enlarged and cast in bronze in 2024, reaching from around one metre to more than two metres in height. Their bright matte-white urethane surface disguises the weight of the bronze beneath, while Nara’s loose arrangement across the grass gives the group something of the presence of ancient standing stones. The installation has been at Château La Coste since April 2026 and remains on view until January 2027.

Born in Hirosaki in northern Japan in 1959, Nara is known internationally for paintings, drawings and sculptures populated by solitary, childlike figures whose expressions can appear vulnerable, stubborn or quietly confrontational. This is a return to Château La Coste for the artist: in 2019 the estate presented Drawings – Last 31 Years, his first solo exhibition in France in more than fifteen years. Here, rather than contained inside a gallery, his familiar faces have been enlarged and placed directly into the landscape.