It’s been a string of strong showings at Sadie Coles over the past year, but I have to say that there is something about the works of Yu Nishimura that gets me. Maybe the work understands my particular thoughts on post-pandemic life, and probably many’s thoughts to be honest, but there is something about the Japanese artist’s regal paintings of loneliness and isolation that have just struck the nerve of modern life. The artist has celebrated what some are calling a meteoric rise in the art market and art world, but that rise of attention seems quite obvious to me: these are the works that are creating the visual aesthetic of how we reached quite a substantial international feeling of remoteness and distance from each other. The devices in our hand pledged community and communication, and all we are left with is space and melancholic quiet.
But as I say this, these works are stunning. Dislocation, the name of the new show at the London gallery, is trying to find meaning in the places we are at emotionally and spiritually. I think there is tension in these works, and I think that tension is why Nishimura has made such significant waves in the market; this work is trying to find a collective meaning of a time where our memories were all given an abrupt caesural moment. —Evan Pricco
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