Yu Nishimura: Towards a Sea

A sea glimpsed through a train window or partially hidden behind trees runs through Yu Nishimura’s Towards a Sea at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. The Japanese painter’s first institutional solo exhibition in France brings together approximately 50 works from the past decade, including new pieces made for the presentation.

Working in oil and tempera, Nishimura moves between landscape and portraiture, allowing familiar subjects to become blurred or partially obscured. A bicycle wheel might appear alongside a human face, while the boundary between water and sky remains difficult to locate. The exhibition follows the artist’s interest in how places are recalled through imperfect images. His compositions borrow from the language of photography and cinema, and give ordinary scenes the elusive quality of something remembered.