Yoshitaka Nanjo Solo Exhibition: senne

Yoshitaka Nanjo was born in 1977 in Sakaide City, Kagawa Prefecture, and completed his graduate studies (painting) at Tokyo Zokei University in 2002. Initially, he was active in exhibitions and art projects in Japan and abroad, mainly in Tokyo, and focused on painting expression using soil.

In 2016, when he moved the center of his life from Tokyo to Wakayama, he began to absorb the local area experientially and show signs of breaking away from expression through two-dimensional works. What brought about a major change was an installation work presented in an exhibition at Art Front Gallery in 2017. This work was a trial of the artist's new development for the Okunoto Triennale held in the same year, in which a ray of light and fine soil fell and accumulated in the darkness, creating an opportunity to express in a different way the time and space he had previously expressed in his paintings. At an art festival held shortly after, he presented an installation set in a closed movie theater, in which disused tools were used as the main actors, as if in a play. From this point on, Nanjo shifted his stance from painting to a more comprehensive form of expression, using sound, light, and space to showcase the history and culture of the local area.

In recent years, Nanjo's activities have been remarkable, and for the Okunoto Triennale 2020＋ at Corona Hazards in 2021, he curated eight artists and their works in the gymnasium of the former Suzu Municipal Seibu Elementary School in response to director Fram Kitagawa's Ohkurazarae project, realizing the Suzu Theatre Museum The concept was realized. The group exhibition "The Secret of the Lake: The River Became a Lake" is currently being held (~9/24) to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Ichihara Lakeside Art Museum, and the new installation rooted in the local community has been attracting attention.