WORKS

2.5-dimensional "palimpsest"
Clélia Cernik [Professor of Philosophy at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Art Critic]

In "Dreams," Akira Kurosawa fulfilled the ultimate dream of every artist: to step into a Van Gogh painting.
Yoshitaka Nanjo, too, conceives works in his own way that involve immersing himself in pre-envisioned images. In his past paintings, he has used the soil and paint of the place he painted to construct images, which is reminiscent of a "palimpsest" in that it integrates the place, deconstructs it, and then reconstructs all the layers and strata. A palimpsest is a manuscript written on parchment, in which medieval scribes erased ancient texts and overlaid them with the characters of their own time. The layers of different characters are translucent and readable, thus revealing different eras simultaneously. Nanjo aims to show temporality as layers in precisely the same way. When he focuses on a particular place, it is not so much an objective geographical composition as a history of the community associated with that territory, and the entire network of relationships, projections, and superpositions resembles a palimpsest.
In contrast, Nanjo's installation works unfold various layers written on palimpsests, aiming to remain in a state close to the superposition of layers in space, somewhere between a plane and a relief, rather than falling into artificial reconstruction, and instead moving away from two dimensions, perhaps even a 2.5-dimensional space. In this way, space arises within the continuity of paintings and images, and the viewer can actually wander "between images." Like old paintings, Nanjo's works remain as a space of projection and interpretation, a palimpsest of space, so to speak.
In some works, the paintings begin to move, becoming moving surfaces and presenting constantly changing, unstable layers. Furthermore, a kind of confusion is created between the paintings and the mirrors, as the fixed surfaces of the paintings come alive while the reflections in the mirrors remain still. Behind the colorful rainbow hues is the very surface of the sea reflected by these images, as if the surface of the ocean has been detached from its depths and transformed into a moving painting. However, the moving surface of the water lacks depth, becoming just another layer in the artist's palimpsed installation.
However, water is an all-encompassing surface, and within its ebb and flow, it becomes ancient strata, layers of early humans and cave paintings, interacting with other surfaces through the movement of waves and buoyancy. Here, everything happens on the surface, but like a palimpsest, the surface is treated as transparent, offering glimpses of the layers woven beneath. In this way, Nanjo reveals the essence and soul of a place by superimposing its temporal layers. By projecting the surface, objects such as ceramics, stones, and everyday tools act as mediators, drawing us into the depths of the temporal layers and guiding us from one surface to another. Shadows, lighting, and projections position new images and constitute a series of devices that diffract space.
Like Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, one could say that "time becomes space here."