Yu Nishimura
Towards a Sea
Exhibition from 21 Oct 2026
In 5 month
Free admission
Monday Closed
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 11am - 7pm
Thursday 11am - 7pm
Friday 11am - 7pm
Saturday 11am - 7pm
Sunday 11am - 7pm
Towards a Sea showcases the artist’s explorations of the landscape through spaces inhabited by different presences and often framed by the sea on the horizon. Bordered by sand or mountains, viewed from a train window, concealed by trees or houses, the blue expanse has accompanied Nishimura since his childhood.
Conceived as a meditative stroll, the exhibition is interwoven with human and animal figures, as well as plant and mineral motifs that overlap with the marine element. In his works, as in our memory, the imaginary merges with reality in enigmatic representations in which the locations permeate and haunt the figures.
Working in oil and tempera, Nishimura transposes photographic and cinematographic principles into painting, thereby revisiting the Western pictorial genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life. Through blurring and layering effects, he imbues his works with a dreamlike and evanescent quality, lending them a certain sense of strangeness. Drawn to multiple details at once, the eye glides from one motif to another, from a close-up portrait to a full- length silhouette, from a human face to an animal head, from a bicycle wheel to the clouds reflecting on the sea.
Towards a Sea reveals the artist’s focus on the beauty of the ordinary and the minute, and on the mysterious and complex nature of beings and things. Each work speaks to the transience of what surrounds us and passes through us, capturing a suspended world.
Curator: Elsa Coustou
Cover image: Yu Nishimura, projection, 2022, oil on canvas, 45.5 × 53 cm. Courtesy the artist and Crèvecœur, Paris.
Free admission
Monday Closed
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 11am - 7pm
Thursday 11am - 7pm
Friday 11am - 7pm
Saturday 11am - 7pm
Sunday 11am - 7pm
