Yu Nishimura: Towards a Sea

Lafayette Anticipations presents the first institutional solo exhibition in France by Japanese painter Yu Nishimura. Bringing together around 50 works created over the past ten years, including several made specifically for the exhibition, “Towards a Sea” explores the artist’s ongoing engagement with landscape.

Conceived as a meditative stroll, the exhibition brings together human and animal figures with plant and mineral motifs, often alongside the sea, which has been a constant presence in Nishimura’s life since childhood. In his paintings, the imaginary merges with reality in enigmatic scenes where places permeate and haunt the figures.

Working in oil and tempera, Nishimura transposes photographic and cinematographic principles into painting, revisiting the genres of portraiture, landscape and still life. Through blurring and layering, he creates dreamlike and evanescent images in which the eye moves between multiple details, from close-up portraits and full-length figures to animals, objects and reflections on the sea.

“Towards a Sea” reveals Nishimura’s attention to the beauty of the ordinary and the minute, as well as to the mysterious and complex nature of beings and things. The works evoke the transience of what surrounds us and passes through us, capturing a suspended world.