Tatzu Nishi

Tatzu Nishi
Born in Aichi, Japan,1960. Lives and works between Berlin and Tokyo.

Tatzu Nishi is internationally renowned for his large-scale public projects. His works transform familiar public items, such as a city monument or streetlight, into an object placed in a private space, like a living room or a hotel room. By transforming public structures into private spaces, he demolishes the notion of the everyday and provoke an intense frisson of excitement in the viewer.

Tatzu Nishi’s main exhibitions were as follows: Yokohama Triennale (2005), “Ecstasy” (2005, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), “Chéri in the sky” (2006, Ginza Maison Hermes, Tokyo), Kaldor Art Projects (2009, Sydney), Aichi Triennale (2010), and Manifesta 10 (2015, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). His major projects in recent years were “The Merlion Hotel” (2011, Singapore), for which he built a hotel room containing the iconic Merlion statue as part of the Singapore Biennale 2011; “Hotel Ghent,” another hotel project incorporating the clock tower of the central station as part of the “TRACK” exhibition (2012, Ghent, Belgium); and “Discovering Columbus” (2012, New York), which transformed the space around the statue of Columbus in Manhattan into a living room. He has won international acclaim for his large-scale projects involving symbols of the country and/or city in question.

He has presented his work in numerous places around the world, such as his recent successful completion of large-scale public projects including “CHILDHOOD Another banana day for the dream-fish”, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); “The Garden Which is The Nearest to God”, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Holland (2015); “Manifesta 10”, The State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia (2014); “Discovering Columbus”, New York (2012); “TRACK”, Gent, Belgium (2012); “Singapore Biennale” (2011); “Aichi Triennale” (2010); “Kaldor Art Projects”, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2009); “Estuaire”, Nante/Saint-Nazaire, France (2009) and “Ecstasy”, MOCA, Los Angeles (2005). He also had a solo show “Tatzu Nishi in BEPPU”, around Beppu city, Oita, Japan in 2017, and “Solo Group Show – Taturo Atzu, Tatzu Nishi, Tazu Rous, Tatzu Oozu, Tatsurou Bashi, Tazro Niscino” at HAB Galerie, Nantes, France in 2015.
He won the Grand Prize from arts category of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2018, and Nissan Art Award, Juror’s Special Award in 2013.

 

Public Collection

National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, Japan
Nissan Art Collection, Kanagawa, Japan
Taguchi Art Collection
Takahashi Ryutaro Collection

 

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