Yoshitaka Nanjo solo show : Out of Time

Yoshitaka Nanjo, born in 1977 in Kagawa Prefecture, produces two-dimensional work mainly on the theme of landscape. Nanjo’s chief original feature is gathering soil from the place to be depicted and using this to generate his painting. He goes to each site, observes it, takes photographs of interesting views, collects soil then brings this back to his atelier to work with. He breaks the landscapes down into their constituent elements, then reconstructs them, selectively, into tableaux.

At a solo show in February 2016, Nanjo liberated his multivalent viewpoint from the conventional painting format, producing his first serious installation. The present work derives from a Fuji-tsuka, or man-made Mt Fuji. These used to be common in Tokyo, and one once stood near the Gallery, but was long since removed. Nanjo’s wish was to transplant the Fuji-tsuka’s story and historical background, into the present. Last September, Nanjo spent a period in Kyoto as an artist in residence, and there began to layer stories onto actual sites. One example was his superimposition of the form of the Rashomon, Kyoto’s ancient great southern gate, as it appears in legend, at the site where the gate had formerly stood. That work will be shown at the VOCA 2017 exhibition in March. Nanjo began reconstituting visually readable elements from the landscape, but then moved to add the element of time. The past infuses his work with history and narrative, while the future is referred to in his imaginative interpretations.

The solo show at Art Front Gallery will reveal Nanjo’s interest in temporality using spatial and interactive means. He will use the Gallery to visualise the accumulation of time. This begins a major transition in Nanjo’s deep and vast on-going interest, which overflows traditional landscape painting. We expect further expansion of his scope in the future, and hope you will enjoy engaging with this artist’s present challenges.