PROFILE

KENTA NAKAJIMA Born 10 December 1984 in Tokyo Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting, Faculty of Art and Design, Musashino Art University He turned professional in his third year at university and has since produced more than a thousand works. Known for realist paintings with female sitters, he received the Tokusen Prize, the highest award at the Nitten exhibition, in 2009 and again in 2014. A member of the Hakujitsukai, he was elected a member of Nitten in 2023 and is currently the youngest member of its Western-style painting division. Taken up by the media as "the painter who sells out", his works with sitters such as Jakucho Setouchi, Becky, Nozomi Sasaki, Yua Shinkawa and Ayaka Komatsu have drawn wide attention. He has appeared on TV Tokyo's "Hinekure 3", TBS's "Nakai Masahiro no Kinyobi no Smile-tachi e" and "NEWS23", TV Asahi's "Tetsuko no Heya" and "Shiro no Bijutsukan", J-Wave's "STEP ONE" and NHK Radio's "Takahashi Gen'ichiro no Tobu Kyoshitsu". He appeared as the Thursday commentator on the TBS morning programme "Gutto Luck!" and as a fortnightly Tuesday commentator on TOKYO MX's "Barairo Dandy" (which ended in September 2024). He also serves as a judge on the popular MBS programme "Prebato!!". He supervised the paintings for Fuji Television's "Motokare no Yuigonjo" and "Confidence Man JP: The Art Dealer". For the 2024 Nitten he painted a work with the former Nogizaka46 member Mai Shiraishi as sitter, and for the 118th Nitten in 2025 he showed "The Unforgettable One", a large-scale portrait of the actor Takao Osawa — his first male sitter — which attracted considerable attention. Principal awards 2007 Hakujitsukai General Honourable Mention 2009 Hakujitsukai A Prize; Tokusen Prize, 41st Nitten 2014 Tokusen Prize, 1st Reorganised Nitten; Grand Prize, 1st Nakayama Academy Award Series Anonymous Horizon — a series of seascapes begun as his graduation work at art school and continued for twenty years. By giving no place name and keeping them anonymous, he hopes viewers will lay their own memories over the picture and see it as a horizon for themselves alone. Titling them "horizon" of land rather than "sea horizon" invites the imagination toward the ground beyond what is painted, so that the works act as a device connecting the recall of past memory to the imagining of a future. a present — a series of still lifes painting moments that are like gifts within daily life. Setting aside the distance that the word "beautiful" can sometimes create, he gives weight to kawaii, an idea approachable across borders. He aims at works that rest gently alongside people: works one would want to give to someone, works that start a conversation in front of them. Flowers of Chance Meeting — a poetic series on the theme of encounter and the passage of time. Red roses symbolising love and blue roses symbolising a miracle are painted against grounds of gold and silver leaf. Roses once painted are erased with spray and painted again on top; through this process he expresses the strangeness of connection — that being in the same place at a different time means passing one another by — and the beauty of loss and renewal that arises by chance. Female figures (Frozen Time and others) — a series of figure paintings inspired by a film about a painter who could stop time, made with the wish that a moment shared with the sitter might become eternal. He chooses sitters with a pull that makes the eye follow them, and works within a wordless dialogue across the canvas. Alongside a transparent softness and allure particular to women, he pursues through realist technique the strength at their core and the way they live.