NEW YORK, NY.- Known for his ability to fuse traditional Japanese painting techniques with a minimalist, contemporary visual language, Hiroshi Senju explores the sacredness of nature and the human condition through his masterful treatment of water and light.

This expansive exhibition includes multiple waterfall works painted with fluorescent pigments, a radical extension of the artist’s exploration of perception and experience. The paintings, including one measuring more than thirty-two feet in length, are installed under ultraviolet light in a darkened space. Visitors are invited to step inside to experience the otherworldly glow of rushing water.

The artist was inspired by the reality of contemporary life, in which much of our existence unfolds beneath artificial light. Under normal illumination, the white streams of water fall softly across the canvases. But when viewed under UV light, they undergo a dramatic transformation—heir physical presence dissolves and shifts into a metaphysical dimension of pure light and energy.

Senju views this experiment within a broader art-historical context. Night scenes have long captivated artists including Van Gogh, Millet, and Toulouse-Lautrec, yet their depictions were filtered through the memory of daylight. Fluorescent pigments, by contrast, alter perception entirely, enabling Senju to capture the mood and psychology of our nocturnal, urban lives. He finds in them a means to express the range of human emotions—joy, sorrow, anger, and elation—that define the dramas of modern existence.

At the heart of this exhibition is a monumental eighteen-panel waterfall painting commissioned for the Ise Shrine, one of Japan’s most sacred Shinto sites. During visits to Ise, Mie Prefecture, about 200 miles southwest of Tokyo, Senju was deeply moved by the atmosphere created by an ancient, unnamed pond. He sought to translate the profound sense of time and place he experienced onto canvas, creating waterfalls that cascade into the pond’s deep-green waters.

As he painted, an intensely physical process, the work evolved organically into a cycle of some thirty separate waterfalls. Experimenting with multifocal perspectives, Senju painted the individual falls from different angles. Each is distinct yet united in a cohesive composition, reflecting his respect for the diversity and individuality of natural forms, and the importance, he says, of honoring different viewpoints and fostering unity in an increasingly fractured world.

The exhibition also includes a twelve-panel installation created for Juko-in Kitakata, a sub-temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto, an historically important Zen temple complex in Japan.

Here Senju turns to the philosophical tenets of Zen, seeking to express ku (emptiness) and mu (selflessness)—states of mind that invite stillness, renewal, and the realignment of the self. The paintings embody the spiritual depth of Zen practice, offering viewers a meditative space that transcends the physical world.

By contrasting these two bodies of work, Senju invites viewers to consider life’s many dualities—light and dark, stillness and motion, the physical and metaphysical.

Born in Tokyo in 1958, Hiroshi Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an Honorable Mention Award at the Venice Biennale (1995), and has participated in numerous notable exhibitions including The New Way of Tea, curated by Alexandra Munroe, at the Japan Society and the Asia Society in New York, 2002; Paintings on Fusuma at the Tokyo National Museum, 2003; and Frontiers Reimagined at the 2015 Venice Biennale. He was recently awarded the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for contributions to art. In 2017, he was honored with the Isamu Noguchi Award, and in 2021, he was awarded the 77th Imperial Prize and the Japan Art Academy Prize from the Japan Art Academy.

Senju’s work is on view at the World Exposition Expo 2025 Osaka through October 13, 2025. A painting is currently on view in Designing Nature: Elements of Harmony at the Portland Japanese Garden in Oregon. In late January 2026 his work will be on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (formerly Freer/Sackler) in Washington, DC.

Public installations include large-scale waterfalls at Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). The Benesse Art Site of Naoshima Island houses two large-scale installations. Two monumental paintings commissioned by the Kongobuji Temple at Koyasan, a UNESCO World Heritage site, were on view in major museums throughout Japan before their installation and consecration in 2020.

Senju’s work is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; National Palace Museum, Taiwan; and Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo. Two works were recently included in the permanent collection of the Nara National Museum, Japan. In 2009, Skira Editore, Milan, published a monograph of his work titled Hiroshi Senju. The Hiroshi Senju Museum Karuizawa, Japan, opened in 2011.