Nerhol are a Tokyo-based artist duo formed in 2007 by Ryuta Iida and Yoshihisa Tanaka. Beginning with explorations into defamiliarizing books, the characters within them, and established forms of images existing in the world, in 2011 they attracted considerable attention with a three-dimensional portrait created by carving into a stack of more than two hundred completely different portraits taken over the span of several minutes. Their practice attempts to unravel the multilayered existence inherent in organic matter that is frequently overlooked in everyday life.

Recent major exhibitions include Nerhol: Seeding and Crows—Misreading Righteousness (Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, 2025), Household Vestiges (Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo, 2025), Nerhol: Turning the leaves of horizons (Chiba City Museum of Art, 2024), Tenjin Mume Nusa (Dazaifu Tenmangu, Fukuoka, 2024), Beyond the Wall (Museo Leonora Carrington, San Luís Potosí, Mexico, 2024), Affect (Dai-ichi Life Gallery and M5 Gallery, Tokyo, 2023), critical plane (Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo, 2021), Interview, Portrait, House and Room (Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea, 2017), and Promenade (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, 2016).

Major collections include Foam Museum (Amsterdam), Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art (South Korea), Fundación AMMA (Mexico), Dazaifu Tenmangu (Fukuoka), Chiba City Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

 

Ryuta Iida was born in 1981 in Shizuoka prefecture. In 2004 he graduated from the Sculpture Course in the Department of Fine Arts at Nihon University College of Art, and in 2014 received his Master’s degree in Intermedia Art from Tokyo University of the Arts. He is currently based in Tokyo.

 

Yoshihisa Takana was born in Shizuoka prefecture in 1980. After graduating in 2004 from the Scenography, Display and Fashion Design Department in the College of Art and Design at Musashino University, Tanaka received his Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University.