Our sense of home is ever-ephemeral. Home never exists as it does in our memories. Time erodes the contours of all we know. “We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection,” writes French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space. “By recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets.” 

Painter and dreamer Yu Nishimura, whose first solo exhibition in the United States, Clearing Unfolds, opens on April 24^th at David Zwirner Gallery in New York, translates his complicated understanding of home onto the canvas in his hazy, melancholy work. Dipping into the well of his own memory of Yokodai, a suburb near the Port of Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture, Nishimura’s paintings often feature solitary figures amidst empty spaces or vast landscapes, imparting a sense of weariness; lonesomeness; an ache for something one can’t be sure even existed in the first place.

Nishimura spent the first 15 years of his life in Yokodai. “I remember it as a fascinating mix of meticulously planned housing and undeveloped spaces,” he says. “Empty lots, forests, and fields. It was one of those ‘new towns’ that were part of the Japanese landscape in the 90s, and it’s definitely where I developed my basic artistic sensibilities.” In “Along the Skyline,” one of three new paintings featured in Clearing Unfolds, a figure walks along a road. Their image is fuzzy, almost incomplete, the subject one with the sky, buildings, and trees behind them. 

Nishimura, born in 1982, studied oil painting at Tama Art University in Tokyo. His father also painted. “My father was involved in art in many different ways,” Nishimura elaborates. “He created paintings and sculptures, taught painting to countless students, and even operated his own gallery space to showcase the work of young artists. I absorbed so much of my artistic drive and many of my ideas from him. At the same time, having him as an artist in my life inspired me to discover my own unique way of expressing myself.” 

Nishimura began pursuing art in the early 2000s when the Superflat movement brought artists like Yoshitomo Nara, Aya Takano, and Takashi Murakami into the contemporary art scene. “The generation before me incorporated images that resonated with the masses into their paintings in unprecedented ways,” Nishimura says. “They harnessed certain unique aspects of Japanese culture.” Still, he thinks there is expansion yet with which to play. “I feel that Japanese painting has yet to fully explore local and suburban perspectives in the last couple of decades,” he shares. “I’ve been continuously searching for ways to incorporate those perspectives into my paintings.” 

Nishimura revisited two works in particular by Daidō Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira while creating the paintings shown in Clearing Unfolds. One, Tales of Tono (Tono Monogatari), a collection of photographs taken by Moriyama in the countryside of northern Honshu, and the other Nakahira’s book: A New Gaze. “They both seem to share this theme of photographers seeking a fresh start and traveling to smaller cities to capture images,” explains Nishimura. “When I studied these photographs, each one struck me as unique, and yet the way they were arranged during the editing process, combined with the feeling evoked by a single picture within a series, resonated deeply.” 

The exhibition’s title captures Nishimura’s creative process. “Moving through something complex and arriving at a single, clear outcome [is] how I view the act of painting,” he explains. “Creating a painting by layering three-dimensional concepts onto a flat surface is akin to unfolding origami. Once unfolded, the resulting image is completely unrecognizable from its initial form.” Like memories revisited. 

Nishimura lives not far from Yokodai now. He returned last year to sort through his father’s belongings after he passed away. “My understanding of my hometown’s layout deepens as time goes on,” says Nishimura, reflecting on how his relationship to Yokodai has evolved. “On my last visit, the empty lots and forests where I used to play had disappeared, replaced by empty rows of houses and apartments that all looked the same. It makes you wonder how many places like that exist throughout Japan. That feeling of being totally disconnected from the land made me realize that my interest in ordinary places truly began there.” 

Despite Nishimura’s interest in ordinary places, his paintings have a surreal quality, haunted by a sense of longing. His figures are flighty and ghostlike, unaffixed to any particular place or time, the boundaries of their bodies incomplete. 

Nakahira once said, “My photography is an absolute necessity for me, having forgotten everything.” Now, Nishimura reinforces the statement: “Painting is inherently a nostalgic medium. I tend to think of it as a form of shared memory. Paintings also provide me with an opportunity for self-reflection. It’s always a point of departure, and if I continue to engage with the canvas, I can move beyond those initial concepts. That basic framework has the potential to connect with anything, regardless of time or location. That’s what I believe painting is capable of, and that’s why I continue to create.”