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Hot new artist: Yu Nishimura, painter of vague dreams
Who are the hot new artists to follow this season? And who are the collectors’ favorites? As the 56th edition of the Art Basel fair is taking place this week, Numéro art has invited six leading figures from the art world to share their latest favourites. Today, focus on painter Yu Nishimura, art curator and advisor Nicolas Trembley’s favourite, who unveils an exclusive canvas in the Unlimited area at the Art Basel fair this week.
By Anya Harrison.
Published on June 16, 2025. Updated on July 7, 2025.
Yu Nishimura, a painter marked by his homeland
Landscapes, urban scenes, anonymous figures who look us straight in the eye or go about their day-to-day business – these peaceful moments characterize the work of Yu Nishimura, a native of Kanagawa in Japan, where he lives and works. The transparency of the thin layers of oil on the canvas, the artist’s hallmark, lend a dreamlike quality to his paintings and the illusion that their subjects are in motion.
“I think Yu Nishimura’s work reflects the lifeblood of his country [Japan],” says curator and art critic Nicolas Trembley. “When you look at one of his paintings, you know it speaks of Japan and its visual history because there’s virtually no perspective – everything is in the foreground and creates this feeling of delicacy that might seem naïve but is, in fact, a stylistic proposition in its own right, and as such is totally different from Western painting.”
The legacy of the Japanese nihonga movement
It is no doubt this ability to create a body of work that is contemporary “in terms of its subjects, but is rooted in the history of Japanese styles, notably the nihonga movement,” which emerged in Kyoto during the last quarter of the 19th century and is based on the conventions, techniques and materials of “traditional” Japanese painting, that recently earned him solo exhibitions at David Zwirner’s in New York (2025), Sadie Coles HQ in London (2024), and the Parisian gallery Crèvecœur, which had already exhibited the artist in 2020 and 2022. He is also a regular at international fairs such as Paris Internationale (2023) and Art Basel Hong Kong (2024).
Yu Nishimura is represented by the Crèvecœur, David Zwirner and Sadie Coles HQ galleries.
Some of the artist’s artworks are currently exhibited on the Sadie Coles HQ gallery stand (Stand K20) at Art Basel, from June 17th to 22nd, 2025, Messe Basel, Basel. The artist also unveiled a monumental canvas in the Unlimited area at the fair (Hall 1).
