Top image: Reflection #29, 2024, Oil, alkyd resin on canvas, 162x162cm, Photo: Takeru Koroda
2.18 Tue – 3.9 Sun, 2025,
Venue: CADAN YURAKUCHO
Address: 1F Kokusai Building, 3-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 11-19pm, Sat, Sun, national holidays 11-17pm
Closed: Mon (or the following weekday if the Monday is a public holiday)
Opening reception: 2.18 (Tue) 18:00-20:00
ARTCOURT Gallery are pleased to present new works by Seishu Niihira, who explores temporal and spatial expressions of painting with an experimental approach through themes of the passage of time and principles in optics layered onto our modern reality inundated with images and information. His Reflection series, which he has continued to create since the early stages of his career, depicts two contrasting images that erode one another, generating a noise-like interference. In his new works, Niihira’s motif is the generative process of portraiture-trained artificial intelligence through which he probes the duality of the contrasting aspects inherent in all things.
Artist Statement
In Buddhist terminology, the concept of ni-ni fu-ni suggests that opposing elements can coexist, like the front and back of a single sheet of paper or the qualities of good and evil within a single person. Similarly, in quantum mechanics, all things are said to possess both particle and wave properties. The idea that things can embody contradictory dualities resonates deeply with my own experiences and has become a central theme in my artistic practice.
In my Reflection series, I overlapped two images as they reflected off and permeated through a windowpane, which merged into a single distorted composition. In this series, I have layered two AI-generated images trained on portraiture. Although not a stark binary opposition, the images are generated from the same training data but under different learning parameters, which allow for ‘alternative possibilities’ to confront one another. Human figures drift about within interfering waves of probability; this is what I see as a genuine portrait of the present.
（Seishu Niihira）
Seishu Niihira
Born in Osaka, 1988. 2014 M.A., Fine Art, Kyoto City University of Arts, Painting Course.
Selected Exhibitions：2023 “MEET YOUR ART FESTIVAL 2023”, TERRADA B&C Hall, Tokyo / 2022 “ACG eyes 7: RECORDS”, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka / 2022 “Kyoto Art for Tomorrow 2022” [Institut français du Japon – Kansai Prize] , The Museum of Kyoto / 2018 “Seishu Niihira: DiVISION” [Solo exhibition], ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
Upcoming Exhibitions and Art Fairs Featuring the Artist in 2025 [Seishu Niihira will be represented by ARTCOURT Gallery at Art Fair Tokyo 2025, Tokyo International Forum, Mar. 7-9], Solo Exhibition “Phantom Paint” [ARTCOURT Gallery, Mar. 22 – Apr. 26], and more.