Shintaro Nakaoka

Shintaro Nakaoka (Ogaki, Gifu, Japan, 1957) graduated in Sculpture from Tama Art University in 1980. Since then he has pursued an international artistic career marked by a sculptural practice deeply bound to stone, to space and to the relationship between matter, tension and emptiness. In 1997 he was in Portugal as an artist in residence under the auspices of the Japanese Ministry of Culture and, since 2000, he has taught at the Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto.

Over more than four decades of career he has taken part in countless international sculpture symposia and in solo and group exhibitions in Japan, Portugal and other countries, establishing a regular presence in institutions, public spaces and events devoted to contemporary sculpture. His work has been distinguished with numerous prizes in Japan, including awards at the Yokohama Biennial, the Rodin Grand Prize and major international sculpture competitions.

His sculptures are held in leading public and museum collections, among them the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Utsukushi-ga-hara Open-Air Museum, the Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and various institutional collections in Portugal and Japan.

His sculptural practice is distinguished by its exploration of materiality, of balance and of the relationship between form and space, producing works that reconcile the Japanese sculptural tradition with a contemporary approach to landscape and to the physical experience of the object.