Yu Nishimura

Yu Nishimura is a painter born in 1982 in Kanagawa, Japan, where he continues to live and work. Using a subdued yet ethereal palette to capture his domestic world, featuring friends, family, pets, and natural landscapes, Nishimura captures the allure of a life quietly lived in his paintings. Characteristic of his practice is a subtle change of perspective, layering of painterly planes, and a slight misalignment of images that congregate to imply a sense of temporality and fluidity.

The artist has previously explained that he wants to capture an image that transforms in the process of production and takes an unexpected direction from his initial thinking. Often using a dry brush or a cloth to rub across the surface of oil paint, Nishimura engages with preexisting traditions ranging from Japanese scroll paintings and modern-day digital images. Despite portraying images from daily life, his technique elevates the quotidian into the realm of the ethereal and ephemeral, immersing the viewer in a direct encounter with the comforting yet surprisingly distinctive topography of mundane moments.

Nishimura’s mesmerizing approach to painting has found him to receive praise on an international level. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize of the Koji Kinutani Prize in 2017 and has seen his works collected by prominent institutions such as the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Long Museum, Shanghai; and the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum. He has also been the subject of numerous exhibitions such as Mon Cherie CoCo at the Institut Français de Tokyo, An Exhibition with Little Information at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, and Aperto 09 Nishimura Yu - paragraph at the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum.