Hiroshi Senju: Physical/Metaphysical

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.

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 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.

Alongside these two large-scale installations, Senju presents a series of waterfall works painted with fluorescent pigments, a radical extension of his exploration of perception and experience. He 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 ultraviolet light, they undergo a dramatic transformation—their physical presence dissolves and shifts into an otherworldly, 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.

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.