Image: Eyestorm, London; TAM; Daniel Hanoch
Noma Bar’s museum retrospective ‘Look Again’ is open through 16 January 2027, bringing together four decades of work—from sketchbooks made when the artist was nine to installations created for the exhibition.
The show centres on the visual language for which Bar is known: bold colour, figurative entanglement and negative space used to hide and reveal motifs and characters. Its images can contain more than one reading, with messages left for viewers to discover. Bar describes his practice as “visual communication”, combining the skills of artist, illustrator and designer.
‘Look Again’ includes high-profile commercial campaigns, historic graphic prints and sculptures, as well as the newer installations. The selection moves between politically and socially charged subject matter and lighter reflections on everyday life. In ‘Which Came First?’ (2013), Bar takes up the familiar chicken-and-egg dilemma.
Among the exhibition’s highlights is ‘Transitions’ (2022), a three-metre-tall upside-down pink teddy bear. A different character is revealed depending on the side from which it is viewed. The retrospective also features a new sculptural adaptation of ‘Look Out’, a three-dimensional model based on Bar’s early image of a dog’s silhouette intertwined with that of a cat.
Bar’s process begins with drawings in a sketchbook, which he then transfers to the screen for digital development towards a final conceptualised solution.
