2006
南条嘉毅個展 " 甲州道中 "
Solo Exhibition " Koshu Dochu "
Gallery S (Tokyo)
Panel, cotton cloth, soil, acrylic paint, etc.
2006
南条嘉毅個展 " 甲州道中 "
Solo Exhibition " Koshu Dochu "
Gallery S (Tokyo)
Panel, cotton cloth, soil, acrylic paint, etc.
Yoshitaka Nanjo employs a technique of fixing collected soil onto the canvas using stencils, thereby decomposing landscapes into their constituent elements. In this exhibition, "Koshu Dochu," he conducted a walking survey of the Koshu Dochu, one of the five major Edo-period highways, focusing on the landscapes of the highway that are closely intertwined with daily life, distinct from places of worship. It is an attempt to present the continuity of landscapes that traverse the past and present as a visual structure.
Yoshitaka Nanjo has reconstructed landscapes materially and structurally by using soil collected on-site as his material and fixing it onto the canvas using the stencil technique. His method of deconstructing the landscape and rearranging it as outlines and forms rejects the immediate assignment of meaning to the subject and questions the very act of seeing.
In this exhibition, "Koshu Kaido," the focus shifts from the clearly religious spaces that Nanjo has dealt with in the past, such as the Kumano Kodo and Fujizuka, to highways that functioned as places of daily life and travel. The Koshu Kaido is a highway with a history of approximately 400 years, leading from Edo to Kofu and Suwa, and traces of it still remain along National Route 20 today. Nanjo examined this road by walking it, searching for the common structures hidden between the landscapes seen by people in ancient times and the modern, urbanized landscape.
This work is an attempt to examine how the religious and worldviews shared by the Japanese people are inherent in the perception and composition of landscapes, even in places where religious symbols are not foregrounded. It is a visual experiment for interpreting landscapes culturally and temporally.