Curated by Jade Doskow

Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach…illogical judgments lead to new experience. -Sol LeWitt, 1969

Nishimura’s work explores, quite simply, the phenomena of light and time. With both Minimalist and Conceptual undertones, these elegant, painterly composited photographs are the result of a complex methodology. Over the last two years, Nishimura has conducted numerous experiments involving the varying temperatures of light and how they project onto a blank wall; live installations examining the fluctuations in pattern and hue of light as it changes over time; and technical experiments to determine the best photographic equipment and films to capture the most ‘accurate’ reading of light as it falls on a blank wall—-i.e., the blank canvas.

The end product is as similar to a Rothko painting as it is to the conceptual practices of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, only Nishimura’s images are wholly contemporary in technique. The light on the wall (typically in any of the artist’s apartments, whether that be his resident Tokyo or, currently, Jackson Heights, Queens) is photographed on transparencies, which are then scanned and carefully composited digitally to create what Nishimura considers to be the most accurate rendering of his impression of the light shifting over time. Ethereal, delicate, and scientific, Nishimura’s light work is the perfect manifestation of light and time, the creation of a formed object from that which has no form.