WORKS

Yoshitaka Nanjo's solo exhibition, "Water Flow," is an attempt to approach the topography and temporal structure of the land that underpins the landscape, using the flow of water as a clue. The exhibition featured 20 paintings on the theme of waterside locations throughout Japan, including Nachi Falls, Toyano Lagoon, the Houou Sanzan mountain range, and the Taushubetsu River Bridge over Lake Nukabira. The artist visited these locations, photographed the landscapes, and simultaneously used soil collected from those places as material for his paintings. Here, the soil is not merely a substance, but is incorporated into the canvas as an entity that embodies the time accumulated by the land.

The experience of walking the Shinano River from its source to its mouth in 2012 forms the foundation of this series of works. Following the water often transformed from directly observing the river itself to interpreting the topography and physically perceiving the undulations and overlaps of the land. Further downstream, human activities such as flood control, water management, and agriculture intersect with the flow of water, and the landscape appears as a place where nature and society overlap. In this exhibition, water functions not only as a moving entity that changes form, but also as a medium that quietly carries the memory of the land. Nanjo's paintings present a perspective that reinterprets the landscape not as a fixed image, but as a generative process in which layers of time continue to accumulate.