Daichiro Shinjo

Solo Exhibition

Aka

2025.4.26 (Sat.) − 5.17 (Sat.)

Opening hours：12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and holidays
*In conjunction with Daisuke Takahashi Solo Exhibition “Open Map”
*The gallery will also be open on 4.29 (Tue.) and 5.3 – 6 (Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue.).

Talk Event: 4.26（Sat.）15:00 – 16:30
Speakers: Daichiro Shinjo, Jin Motohashi (Registrar of 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa), Yoshi Tsujimura (Editor-in-Chief of TOO MUCH Magazine)
*Please note that the exhibition will not be available for viewing while the talk show event is being held.
*Japanese only

Opening reception: 4.26（Sat.）17:00 – 19:00
*The artist will be present at all the events.
*Please refrain from sending congratulatory flowers.

Aka 02 (2025) Sumi on canvas, H162xW130.3cm ©︎Daichiro Shinjo

We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition of works by Daichiro Shinjo titled Aka, from April 26 (Sat.) to May 17 (Sat.), 2025.

Daichiro Shinjo was born on the island of Miyako in Okinawa in 1992, and his activities are still based there. He is an up-and-coming young artist whose art is grounded in traditional calligraphy made with ink from sumi (hardened black ink sticks that are rubbed on ink stones with water to produce ink) and brush, and goes beyond this framework in pursuit of calligraphy for the contemporary age. He is expanding the scope of his activities inside and outside Japan. He held his first overseas solo exhibition titled Black Wax at ALTA Gallery in Los Angeles in 2023, and contributed a work for the exhibition DANCING WITH ALL: The Ecology of Empathy at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, in 2024.

Shinjo is the grandson of Keisho Okamoto (1938-2024), a folklorist and Zen monk. In his early childhood, he freely drew characters with sumi ink in an environment where calligraphic works and paintings by the famous monks Sengai and Hakuin were close at hand. He studied architecture at the university, and was involved in architectural design for a time, but left this work out of a sense of alienation from society and his life. He subsequently continued to create works of calligraphy at his home, and made his debut as a full-fledged artist with a solo exhibition held in 2017. While based on a simple calligraphic structure of black characters on the supporting medium, the characters were so abstract as to be undecipherable, due to their thick lines and dots. They became organic forms that radiated energy in the picture and appeared to wriggle. These black entities containing a sense of space somehow leave the viewer with a sculptured impression, in spite of the works being two-dimensional. This will be Shinjo’s first solo exhibition at ANOMALY. It will display about 25 of his latest works, both canvas and paper, on the theme aka,* which were born of successive occurrences affecting Shinjo in recent years, and he can only produce now.

 
People generally think that works of calligraphy are completed in a few moments. Shinjo’s calligraphy, however, rests on a long process that could even be termed ceremonial. After researching the origins of the characters and learning their forms, he first prepares a comfortable space and then intently writes the characters over and over again, searching for that instant when his body and the written characters come together as one. Finally, he writes the characters on paper or canvas placed on the floor, using his whole body. This method derives from his desire for expression that releases all of the energy generated from his body, letting gravity pull it down as is. He makes his own sumi by boiling down a mixture of glue extracted from animal bones and hides, and soot. It therefore differs from ready-made sumi and takes a lot of time and trouble to make. As a material, it is also very hard to handle because its state changes with time. In the simple monochromatic expression of calligraphy, nevertheless, it is indispensable for sublimation of “living” natural materials with an energy that cannot be easily controlled and their strong texture into the honest works that are Shinjo’s ideal.

 
Shinjo’s characters are the ultimate in abstractions and no longer retain their original forms. All that lie before the viewer’s eyes are the concept behind the title affixed to the work and the shapes on the surface. The viewers are led to an experience in which their perception of the solid presence of characters (writing) that ushered in and has guided civilization suddenly becomes blurred, and they are confronted with a free world beyond. Just as Shinjo feels uneasy and has doubts about the glut of written information that is input into him on a daily basis, his works question the existence of characters (writing) in contemporary society. This also connects with the Zen teaching of furyumonji,* which he has been familiar with since childhood.

Miyako has a history that is unique even in the Japanese context, beginning in the days of the Ryukyu Kingdom and containing a period of American administration after the war. It has always been compelled to change by external forces. Even today, its landscape and traditions are still undergoing significant changes due to large-scale development. The continued production of works by Shinjo as he follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, who was a folklorist, is research of the spiritual culture that is Miyako’s unchanging core. He reproduces this core on paper as a new type of expression fused with calligraphy. In addition, Shinjo is putting efforts into the operation of PALI GALLERY, which opened in Miyako. It is a space that aims to make art more accessible to the local community by bringing in people from inside and outside the island, and to thereby become a venue of cultural dissemination and creation by people with a diversity of perspectives.
Contemporary society places priority on efficiency and convenience, and is saddled with numerous issues. We hope you are looking forward to Shinjo’s new works as messages to us living in this society from both the artist and the southern island where he was born and raised.

Note:
*A Zen teaching that enlightenment is not transmitted by words and writing, but can be attained by questioning things.

*About the title of this exhibition
Aka (Red), the title of this exhibition, is a word symbolizing movement and life force that we cannot see but nonetheless exist. Shinjo says that incidents of life and death that have occurred close to him in recent years are symbolic of sudiru―a term for resurrection and rebirth in the Miyako outlook on life and death. From these experiences, for the theme of this exhibition, he chose aka, which may be equated with movement and life force in this outlook. The pieces shown in this exhibition make up his Aka series, for which he sublimated the characters associated with the aka theme into works.

Daichiro Shinjo
Daichiro Shinjo was born in Miyakojima, Okinawa in 1992, and graduated from the Shizuoka University of Art and Culture. His grandfather was Keisho Okamoto, a folklorist and monk, and he began doing calligraphy while becoming familiar with Zen and Buddhist culture from an early age. With a background that includes the spiritual culture of Okinawa as well as Zen, he pursued a free style that cast new light on traditional calligraphy. He is developing a kind of calligraphy that is not bound by formalistic rules, by means of a contemporary expression accompanied by physicality and spatiality.

Daichiro Shinjo held Surprise, his first solo exhibition, at Playmountain Tokyo in 2017. Since then, he has shown works inside and outside Japan, at places including ALTA Gallery in Los Angeles (in 2023). His works were taken up in the tricot COMMES des GARÇONS show in 2021 and the TAO collection show in 2024. In addition, he appeared in HUMAN ODYSSEY, a documentary film made by Hermès in 2021. He opened the PALI GALLERY on Miyakojima, his birthplace, in 2022. He participated in an art project held in the Tokyu Kabukicho Tower in 2023 by installing works in a hotel entrance and guest rooms, and contributed a work for the exhibition DANCING WITH ALL: The Ecology of Empathy at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, in 2024. In 2025, he published SUDIRU, a collection of photographs taken by his late grandfather Keisho Okamoto, who documented festivals and functions in Miyakojima in the 1970s, and his own works as his grandson