Whitehot Magazine
November 2025
"The Best Art In The World"
"The Best Art In The World"
November 2025
Hiroshi Senju: The Art of the Metaphysical Abyss at Sundaram Tagore Gallery - by Coco Dolle
Paintings by Hiroshi Senju. Installation image courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 2025
By COCO DOLLE November 3, 2025
At Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Chelsea, Hiroshi Senju invites you to a sensorial journey through light and shadow. Trained in the classical methods of Japanese painting, Senju has long been captivated by nature’s wonders, its waterfalls, cliffs, and currents rendered with meditative moods. For his solo exhibition PHYSICAL/METAPHYSICAL, the artist takes the viewers to walk from a traditional daylight gallery space into a hypnotic, nocturnal abyss, exploring the duality of existence, of matter versus energy.
Since 2007, Senju has experimented with fluorescent pigments, producing waterfalls that glow under ultraviolet light. These works mark a radical evolution in his practice, merging traditional materials with contemporary technology to heighten sensory experience. Further, Senju’s fascination with the night, and with art historical depictions of nocturnal scenes from Van Gogh’s Starry Night to Toulouse-Lautrec’s shadowed cabarets, emerges as a conceptual inspiration for the show.
Divided into Dayfall/Nightfall spaces, the gallery transforms into a fully immersive installation. A wall divides the vast Chelsea space into two experiences.
Paintings by Hiroshi Senju. Installation image courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 2025
In the Dayfall section, we encounter Senju’s paintings under standard illumination, softly cascading waterfalls rendered in subtle blues, pinks, greens, greys, and yellows. A monumental eighteen-panel work, originally commissioned for a Shinto site, anchors the space. Here, water becomes light, and light becomes a form of spiritual descent.
Following in the Nightfall section, where the visitor enters an entirely different realm. Under UV light, electric blues and black canvases transform stillness into motion. It feels like stepping into an underwater theatre, where pigment and light turn into cosmic chambers. One can almost hear the hush of falling water, as if standing within an ASMR dream.
Dayfall/Nightfall painting by Hiroshi Senju, 2025
Senju’s use of fluorescent material under black light speaks to the rhythms of modern existence, and echoes the psychological space we inhabit in cities illuminated by artificial light. Senju’s waterfalls are not about erosion or fall, but about continuity and rebirth.
Dayfall/Nightfall painting by Hiroshi Senju, 2025
While others pursue spectacle through maximalist gestures, think of Cai Guo-Qiang’s recent pyrotechnic show at the Centre Pompidou during Art Basel, Senju’s explosions are inward. His “fireworks” are made of pigment, gravity, and silence. The drips cascading down his canvases evoke both a sanctuary of color and the drama of human emotion, condensed into meditative abstraction.
Hiroshi Senju’s PHYSICAL/METAPHYSICAL reminds us that art can be both a spectacle and a solace. It is a meditation on impermanence, a poetic embrace of darkness. In the depths of Senju’s nocturnal abyss, we discover not fear or loss, but peace.
Paintings by Hiroshi Senju. Installation image courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 2025
PHYSICAL / METAPHYSICAL by Hiroshi Senju
On view until December 11, 2025
Coco Dolle
Coco Dolle is a French-American artist, writer, and independent curator based in New York since the late 90s. Former dancer and fashion muse for acclaimed artists including Alex Katz, her performances appeared in Vogue and The NY Times. Over the past decade, she has organized numerous exhibitions acclaimed in high-end publications including Forbes, ArtNet, VICE, and W Magazine. She is a contributing writer for L’Officiel Art and Whitehot Magazine. As an artist, her work focuses on body politics and feminist issues as seen at the Oregon Contemporary (OR) and Mary Ryan Gallery (NYC).
Follow her on instagram.
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