In the quiet subterranean space of NANZUKA UNDERGROUND, Dutch artist Raymond Lemstra presents Good Looking, a new solo exhibition that reconsiders the nature of portraiture. On view from March 7 to April 4, 2026, the exhibition introduces a new chapter in Lemstra’s long-running Personnage Fictionnel series, bringing together twenty drawings and six paintings that blur the boundary between observation and imagination.
At first glance, Lemstra’s works resemble traditional portraits: finely rendered faces emerging from pale grounds, their expressions neutral yet strangely charged. Look closer, however, and the illusion dissolves. These are not portraits of real individuals. Instead, they are invented figures—faces assembled from fragments of memory, distortion, and intuition. Lemstra’s practice taps into a deeply human instinct: our tendency to perceive faces in abstract shapes and patterns. His characters hover between familiarity and strangeness, inviting viewers to project personality and narrative onto forms that remain fundamentally ambiguous.
Born in Groningen in 1978 and educated at the Academy Minerva, Lemstra first developed a reputation for his meticulous graphite drawings. These works—carefully constructed yet subtly warped—present anonymous figures that feel both playful and faintly cynical. Their precision suggests realism, but their distortions reveal something more psychological: portraits not of individuals, but of perception itself.
In recent years, Lemstra has expanded beyond drawing to pursue painting more fully. A residency in Somo, Spain, in 2015 marked a turning point, prompting him to explore color and material in ways that extended the conceptual groundwork of his drawings. In Good Looking, this evolution becomes particularly visible. The exhibition debuts a new group of paintings that combine traditional Dutch oil techniques with hanji, the handmade Korean paper crafted from the fibers of the paper mulberry. The result is a tactile surface where layered pigments meet fibrous texture, linking European painterly traditions with East Asian craft.
The choice of materials reflects Lemstra’s own transnational trajectory. Although Dutch by birth, he now lives and works in Seoul, and the paintings carry traces of this cultural passage. The fusion of oil paint and hanji becomes more than a technical experiment—it mirrors the hybrid identity of the artist himself, bridging geographic and aesthetic traditions.
What remains consistent across Lemstra’s work is his fascination with the threshold between figuration and abstraction. His portraits are structured with remarkable discipline, yet they deliberately resist stable identity. A cheekbone may appear slightly too sharp, an eye subtly misaligned, or a shadow exaggerated. These distortions disrupt the illusion of realism just enough to create unease. The viewer recognizes a face, yet cannot fully trust it.
In this way, Lemstra reframes portraiture not as representation but as an encounter. The faces in Personnage Fictionnel are not individuals to be recognized but structures through which recognition occurs. They prompt the viewer to ask why certain arrangements of lines and shapes suddenly feel alive—why the mind insists on discovering humanity even where none exists.
The title Good Looking carries a double meaning. It might refer to the faces themselves, but it also gestures toward the act of looking: the careful attention required to move from observation to interpretation. Lemstra’s work rewards patience, drawing viewers into a quiet dialogue between perception and projection.
Coinciding with the exhibition, NANZUKA Publishing has released Personnage Fictionnel, the first monograph dedicated to Lemstra’s work. The publication, produced in a limited edition with an accompanying print, situates the exhibition within a broader trajectory—one that charts the gradual transformation of the artist’s invented faces over time.
Ultimately, Good Looking is less about portraiture than about the fragile mechanics of recognition. In Lemstra’s hands, the human face becomes a site of speculation: a place where the viewer’s imagination completes what the artist has only begun.
In the dim gallery space beneath Tokyo’s streets, these fictional characters wait patiently for that moment of connection—when a stranger’s gaze animates them, if only for a second.
Images courtesy of Image RaymondLemstra | Nanzuka
