Executed in 2023, Yu Nishimura’s through the snow captures the dreamlike and liminal scenes that have taken centre-stage in the rising Japanese artist’s practice. Painted on a commanding scale, the present work foregrounds the artist’s hazy painterly approach, allowing the canvas to envelop the viewer in the delicate sense of sentimentality and intimacy found in everyday life. Belonging to the artist’s much-acclaimed series of double portraits, through the snow first originated by chance when Nishimura decided to rework close-up portraits by painting over them, while still retaining the original image. Deeply influenced by Japanese photographers Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, Nishimura imbues his compositions with a similarly fleeting, blurred sensibility. His ability to capture the essence of people and places, transfiguring mundane environments into emotionally resonant compositions, has earned him widespread institutional recognition. His works are held in prestigious collections internationally, including the Centre Pompidou Paris; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; and the Taguchi Art Collection, Japan.

Closely cropped to fill the height of the canvas, in through the snow a man gazes into the distance with a contemplative gaze. The same subject is portrayed atop his countenance, walking under the shelter of an umbrella. Protecting himself from the delicately painted snow falling across the canvas, Nishimura captures him mid-motion in a cinematic vignette, devoid of any other contextual markers. In doing so, the artist facilitates an intimate encounter with his doubly painted character; the viewer is at once engaged with his interior world and exterior appearance. Painted by layering thin washes of oil paint, the artist creates a haziness, adjacent to capturing a process in movement. As Nishimura describes the blurred quality of his paintings “it’s like that moment when you wake up from a dream, and don’t really understand what happened, but you still have this feeling of [it] being very tactile and raw. I think capturing this unnameable experience is the role of painting” (the artist quoted in Dobedo Represents, Takashi homma Photographs Artist Yu Nishimura for Marfa, March 2025, p. 59, online).

Born in 1982 in Kanagawa Japan, Nishimura’s source material spans graduation albums, old amateur photographs to pre-war photographs often found in second-hand bookstores. When he starts painting, however, the artist works entirely from fragments of memories to construct new images. The man Nishimura paints in through the snow is not drawn from reality, but rather a fictitious character he creates. The artist has often described his practice as an interrogation of the myriad manifestations of the history of portraiture, extending beyond mere figuration to delve into the essence of his subjects. As if to gather remnants of memory for reflection, Nishimura’s through the snow channels an emotional enchantment that captures the quotidian and the personal. Here, his protagonist traces the haze of everyday life in wispy and reserved expressions.