KOICHI SATO: NERDY NERD NECK

NANZUKA is pleased to present Koichi Sato's solo exhibition “Nerdy Nerd Neck”, at Sushi Saito Hanare NANZUKA.

March 12 – April 26, 2025

Koichi Sato was born in Tokyo in 1974. He moved to New York in 1999, at the age of 25, where he taught himself to paint while working as a corporate graphic designer. It was in the mid-2010s that he commenced his career as an artist, having been discovered by the late Bill Brady (Bill Brady Gallery). Since then, he has held solo exhibitions at Bill Brady Gallery (Miami, USA), The Hole (NY, USA), Jack Hanley Gallery (NY, USA) and others, also taking part in the group exhibition “Tokyo Pop Underground” (Jeffery Deitch, LA, USA, 2019) curated by NANZUKA.

In 2024, Sato held his first solo exhibition in Japan, Specifically Random, at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND in Jingumae, Tokyo. Sato, influenced by the images he grew up with—such as those from TV, manga, and magazines—depicts them in a playful and engaging way.

His artwork is often intended to bring joy to others. He dislikes assumptions that people should or must be a certain way, instead actively pursuing humor and the open-mindedness that resides within it.

Although these unconditionally cheerful characters are at once somewhat nostalgic, they present the impression of being strangely disconnected from specifications such as time, place, race, ideology, and culture. This is indeed significantly related to Sato’s unpretentious, down-to-earth personality, as an artist who expresses a desire to be “more mindlessly absorbed in the act of painting.” This exhibition, “Nerdy Nerd Neck,” features five works that were painted in 2024.