WORKS

This work is a pair of paintings that explore the layering of natural environments and historical time contained within urban spaces. Both works utilize soil collected from the production sites as a material, attempting to incorporate the unique materiality of the place into the canvas, going beyond mere visual representation. Yoshitaka Nanjo views landscapes not merely as "objects to be painted," but as spaces that mediate the time and memories inherent in the land itself. Through the technique of mixing local soil with supports and paints, he has consistently practiced internalizing the dynamics of place into his paintings.

 The Shibuya area, where the story takes place, boasts vast green spaces such as Yoyogi Park and the Meiji Jingu Shrine forest, and is a region where human activity has been continuously layered since before the Edo period. By superimposing the current visible landscape with past landscapes of the same location, Nanjo reinterprets the time latent in urban space not as discontinuity, but as continuity. The multi-layered screen composition in this work functions as a device to materially visualize this temporality.

 The first work, "To the Sky I (Yoyogi Park)," focuses on the history of the former Yoyogi training ground, where Japan's first powered flight was attempted. By superimposing the image of two prototype airplanes onto this place, now recognized as a forest park, and using soil collected on-site, the artist connects the nascent desire of a modern aspiration to "challenge the sky" to the present day, along with the material memories etched into the land.

 The second work, "To the Sky II (Kiridoshi Slope)," takes Kiridoshi Slope, located behind Meiji Jingu Shrine, as its subject. This location is positioned as an important turning point in the history of modern Japanese painting, thanks to Kishida Ryusei's "Sketch of Kiridoshi," painted around 1915. In that work, Kishida went beyond realistic reproduction and presented a new painterly attitude that sought to touch upon "the beauty of the land itself" by thoroughly engaging with familiar natural elements such as red soil, grass, and the undulations of the slope. The landscape is no longer merely a background, but rises up on the canvas as a tangible presence.

 Nanjo revisits this cut-through slope as the "place" that Kishida confronted. However, in modern times, the slope has been paved with asphalt and transformed into a landscape sandwiched between urban structures. Nanjo superimposes the landscapes of the past and present, and at the same time, by incorporating soil collected from the site as a painting material, he materially recalls the memory of the red soil that has been visually lost. Here, painting functions not as a medium of reproduction, but as a device that transmits the time accumulated in the land.

 These two paintings, while referencing Ryusei Kishida's methodological shift in modern painting, are an attempt to update it in a contemporary way through a thorough engagement with matter and time. By reconstructing landscape, history, and matter as inseparable elements, these works allow us to perceive the depth of time latent in the city, while simultaneously re-presenting the contemporary possibilities of the medium of painting.

 Since exhibiting at the VOCA Exhibition, Yoshitaka Nanjo's work has expanded significantly into spatial and temporal dimensions, while maintaining the methodology of two-dimensional works with landscapes as its theme. What was praised at the VOCA Exhibition was his unique expression, which did not depict landscapes as visual reproductions, but rather incorporated the time and memories inherent in the land into the painting by interposing materials such as soil and sand from the site onto the canvas. This material approach would later lead to installations that transcended the boundaries of painting in his subsequent work.

 In his works at the Oku-Noto Triennale and the Setouchi International Art Festival, elements such as soil, sand, water, light, and sound are arranged throughout the space, creating a structure in which viewers can physically experience the accumulation and circulation of time. In particular, his attempts to visualize the time that accumulates in the earth and the transformation processes of materials such as seawater, salt, and sand clearly demonstrate Nanjo's interest in "spatializing time itself."

 On the other hand, even after these spatial practices, Nanjo continues to return to the medium of painting. The two paintings in this work are positioned within this return to the medium, and can be seen as an attempt to compress and condense the sense of time and physicality acquired in the installation back onto a two-dimensional plane. The multi-layered composition using soil collected on-site is an act of reorganizing the thickness of time that unfolded spatially within the limited support of painting.

 In this sense, this work does not summarize Nanjo's creative history since VOCA, but rather, while encompassing that movement, it can be positioned as a practice that re-examines the critical possibilities that painting still possesses. His exploration of landscape, material, and time deepens as he moves back and forth between plane and space, and this work represents an important turning point that clearly demonstrates that continuity.