Digital & generative artist

Light, written in code.

Kai Nomura builds immersive works where light, memory, and machine become one material — generative installations and editioned prints, exhibited worldwide and held in private collections.

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Based: Kyoto · Berlin
Working since: 2004
Mediums: Code, light, print

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The practice

For two decades I have treated code as a material — as physical as clay, as fleeting as light. My work is not made by the machine; it is made with it. Each system is tuned until it breathes, then released to find its own form.

— K.N.

Selected works

A field of light, never the same twice.

Ma (間) — Generative light installation — Ma (間)
Generative light installation
2024

Tidal Memory — Real-time projection, sound — Tidal Memory
Real-time projection, sound
2023

Hanabi Engine — Generative print series — Hanabi Engine
Generative print series
2024

Silent Architecture — LED matrix, custom code — Silent Architecture
LED matrix, custom code
2022

After Image — Archival pigment print — After Image
Archival pigment print
2025

Static Garden — Interactive installation — Static Garden
Interactive installation
2023

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Some works only exist once.

Each edition is signed, certified, and released in a strictly limited run. When it is gone, it is gone.

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Studio principles

Four rules the studio runs on.

The code is the brush.

Tools should vanish. What remains on the wall is feeling, not technique.

Impermanence is the medium.

A work that can change is more alive than one fixed forever in glass.

Light belongs to no one.

I borrow it, shape it, and give it back. The viewer completes the piece.

About

I make work that disappears the moment you understand it.

I grew up between two cities and two alphabets, and I think that is why impermanence never frightened me. My earliest pieces were small programs that drew with light and then forgot what they had drawn.

Today my studio sits somewhere between an observatory and a workshop. I write the systems, tune them by hand, and let them run until something honest appears. Then I step back.

When a work leaves the studio, it keeps changing. That is the point. I am not selling an object so much as a way of paying attention.

Based

Kyoto · Berlin

Working since

2004

Mediums

Code, light, print

Represented by

Meridian Gallery

The studio process

From observation to exhibition.

01
Observe
Months of looking — at tides, crowds, signal noise, the way a room holds dusk. Nothing is sketched yet.
02
Compose
I write the rules of the system: how light is born, how it decays, what it remembers. The score before the symphony.
03
Generate
The system runs for days. I sit with it, tune it by hand, and wait for the moment it stops being mine.
04
Exhibit
Each work is editioned, certified, and installed — in a gallery, a private collection, or a screen in your home.

Acquire

Own a piece of the field.

Limited editions, each signed and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a lifetime conservation guarantee. Worldwide shipping, fully insured.

After Image — Plate I

Archival pigment print, 90 × 112 cm

Edition of 12

€4,800

Hanabi Engine — 03

Generative print, 70 × 93 cm

Edition of 25

€2,400

Ma (間) — Still

Editioned digital work, 4K, with display

Edition of 8

€6,200

Tidal Memory — Frame 41

Archival pigment print, 100 × 69 cm

Edition of 30

€1,950

Enquire about a work

Begin

Start with a single conversation.

Acquiring an edition, planning a commission, or simply curious — write to the studio. No pressure, just a real reply.

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In their words

What collectors and curators say.

“Standing inside one of Nomura's installations, you stop checking your phone. Time slows down. That is the rarest thing an artwork can do now.”

Elena Vossberg

Curator, Kunsthalle Nord

“We bought a print and ended up rearranging the whole room around it. It changes with the daylight — it is never the same painting twice.”

Marcus & Lia Hartmann

Private collectors, Zürich

“Kai is one of the few artists working with code who never lets the technology become the subject. The work is always, quietly, about us.”

Daniel Asante

Director, Lumen Festival

Exhibited & collected

Shown in good company.

01Meridian Gallery
02Aurora Biennale
03Lumen Festival
04Kunsthalle Nord
05Pavilion 9
06Nocturne Foundation
07Verso Institute
08Halcyon Trust
09Field Museum of Light
10Serra Collection

Questions

Before you acquire.

Every work ships with a signed certificate of authenticity, an embedded edition number, and a registry entry held by the studio. Digital works include a verifiable provenance record.

Yes. All works are shipped fully insured, in archival packaging, by specialist art couriers. Lead time is typically two to four weeks depending on framing and destination.

Selectively. The studio takes on a small number of commissions each year — site-specific installations and bespoke generative works for collectors and institutions.

Editioned digital works arrive with a calibrated display and a lifetime conservation guarantee. The studio handles updates, replacements, and migration so the work outlives the hardware.

Light, written in code.

Kai Nomura builds immersive works where light, memory, and machine become one material — generative installations and editioned prints, exhibited worldwide and held in private collections.

Based: Kyoto · Berlin
Working since: 2004
Mediums: Code, light, print

Light, written in code.Light,writtenincode.

A field of light, never the same twice.Afieldoflight,neverthesametwice.

Ma (間)

Tidal Memory

Hanabi Engine

Silent Architecture

After Image

Static Garden

Some works only exist once.Someworksonlyexistonce.