WORKS

This exhibition, "A Must-See!", is Yoshitaka Nanjo's first solo exhibition and showcases the starting point of his creative work, which he has continued since his time in the graduate school at Tokyo Zokei University. The exhibition is held in a format where four university classmates each hold a solo exhibition for one week consecutively, and a group exhibition by the same members is simultaneously set up in the adjacent room.

The exhibited works primarily focus on attempts to depict landscapes using soil as a material, but also include a series composed solely of white acrylic paint. The artist begins by tracing photographs with a pen, presenting the tracing itself as a work of art. From there, by reconstructing the canvas using soil and paint, the artist re-examines the very conditions under which landscapes are formed.

The subjects of the research range from the immediate surroundings to the Nebuta Festival in Aomori, Kegon Falls in Tochigi, the scenery of Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto, and even figures extracted from paintings by Tawara Sōtatsu, demonstrating an extremely wide range. Through these diverse motifs, the artist posed the question, "What do people see that makes them recognize a landscape?" and attempted to deconstruct and rearrange the elements that make up a landscape.

His works are not limited to two-dimensional forms; he also creates thick layers of paint and clay, floor-standing pieces, and self-standing box-shaped objects. This exhibition is an important early exhibition that shows that his fieldwork and interest in materials, which would continue in later years, were already beginning to emerge in a multifaceted way at this point.