Yu Nishimura Brings his Dreamlike Canvases to America with David Zwirner
The German gallerist said his daughter introduced him to the Japanese artist and he was ‘immediately intrigued’. Save to My Ocula
Yu Nishimura is following up a busy period of international recognition and record-breaking auction results with new representation.
David Zwirner has announced the representation of the Japanese artist in the lead-up to New York’s busiest art week—as the artist has their first solo show in the United States at the gallery’s East 69th Street venue.
Clearing Unfolds, open at David Zwirner’s 69th Street gallery until mid-June, features Nishimura’s nostalgic canvases—influenced by street photography, anime, and the urban and natural landscapes of the artist’s home country.
The exhibition gathers a selection of new paintings and works on paper that delve into Yu Nishimura’s formative memories of suburban Japan in the 1990s.
Highlights include expansive urban scenes rendered in oil and tempera, where softened, semi-blurred forms and pared-down shapes drift across the canvas. Restrained palettes and spare compositions evoke the gentle haze of recollection as if each image is filtered through the lens of fading memory.
David Zwirner said it was his daughter Marlene who introduced him to the artist’s work.
‘I was immediately intrigued,’ he said. ‘Yu manages to blend contradictory forces—namely the rigour of modernism with what I would call his own take on neo-romanticism. His works get under your skin. His sophisticated paint handling reflects a deep investigation of the genre, yet his voice is entirely contemporary.’
Recent auction successes have underscored Nishimura’s rise.
In February 2025, his painting Sandy beach (2020) sold for $296,100 USD at Christie’s New York, more than seven times its low estimate and doubling the artist’s previous record set just months earlier.
Nishimura’s work A Man between Branches (2021) is scheduled for auction at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale on 15 May 2025. —[O]
Main image: Yu Nishimura, One Amidst Many (2025). Oil on canvas. 194 x 162 cm. Exhibition view: Clearings Unfolds, David Zwirner, New York (24 April–27 June 2025). Courtesy David Zwirner.
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