Highlights of exhibited works

Note: Some of the exhibited works are subject to change.

Statement

Yoh Nagao is a contemporary artist who expresses his unique worldview through collage and acrylic paints based on the concept, “We will be the indigenous people of the future.”

Nagao creates collages from the worlds of skateboarding, music, fashion and graphic design that he has been a part of since his school days. After moving to Berlin in 2012, he has mainly debuted his artworks outside Japan.

Living overseas has given Nagao the opportunity to re-examine his own identity, and he has come to think that "People who continue to live the same way as in the past and who have not been influenced by the changes of the times from modernization and civilization we call indigenous people. But from the standpoint of our descendants who will inherit our lifestyle and culture, we could also be called the indigenous people of the future." In addition, "These indigenous peoples have kept things alive over the generations, and they contain strength and things that we must not lose." So then, "As the indigenous people of the future, we have to ask ourselves: What could we leave for our descendants? What must we leave for our descendants?"
Nagao has visited indigenous peoples around the world, including in Mexico, Namibia, Mongolia and India, and conducted local field work projects and produced art during his stays. In creating artworks that combine the colors and decorative elements he discovered on these trips with his own expression, he shows us things that we cannot afford to lose transcending national borders and time from the past to the modern day. Nagao is bursting with vitality, and he pours his spirit into the vividly colorful and bohemian images that create his colorful worldview, which could be called his wishes for a brighter future.

In Japan, many festivals that have continued without interruption for generations up to the present were forced to be canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic, while events expected to bring in large revenue were held. In modern society, the local traditional events that serve as anchors in our souls are being pushed away and marginalized. In this exhibition, Nagao exhibits works created with the motif of the festival energy of ogres, long-nosed Tengu goblins, lion dances and other characters that have appeared in festivals and rituals since time immemorial but have now disappeared (=Vacancy) from our everyday lives. They question what we, as Japanese people living in the modern day and the indigenous people of the future, must not lose.

This exhibition is held in conjunction with and in support of the "RE:RELATION" concept of Shibuya Fashion Week 2022 Spring, which asks, "There are relationships that have not changed and relationships that have changed dramatically in the vortex of change confusing the world. The perception, sensibility and values created by the relationships: What will be born from Shibuya here by facing them again?”

Visit YUGEN Gallery to see the solo exhibition "Vacancies" by contemporary artist Yoh Nagao, the first in a series of curated exhibitions at YUGEN Gallery by the bilingual art magazine ONBEAT, which focuses a critical lens on Japanese art and culture and communicates their appeal to the world.

Giveaway campaign: Yoh Nagao's 2022 original calendar