Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa wins Richard Mille Art Prize 

DUBAI: Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa has been awarded the Richard Mille Art Prize by the Louvre Abu Dhabi and luxury brand Richard Mille. 

Kurokawa was chosen from the shortlisted artists whose works are featured in Louvre Abu Dhabi’s “Art Here” 2025 exhibition. The artist received the award along with a $60,000 prize during a ceremony in Nikko, Japan, this week. 

The artist’s winning work “skadw-” transforms shadows into an immersive, atmospheric installation that uses light, sound, and drifting fog to shape a shadow. A narrow beam moves through layers of mist, generating patterns that appear and dissolve. 

Kurokawa was responding to the art prize’s 2025 theme “Shadows” and, according to organizers, sought to approach shadow not as a byproduct of light “but as a substance that shapes how we sense space.” 

“Ryoichi Kurokawa’s ‘skadw-’ presents a nuanced response to this year’s theme. His approach, shaped by traditions from Japan and connected to a wider audience, speaks to the cross-cultural exchange at the core of the Richard Mille Art Prize,” Tilly Harrison, managing director Richard Mille Middle East, said in a statement. 

Kurokawa is an audiovisual artist who was born in Osaka in 1978. He is now lives and works in Berlin. 

The winner was selected by a five-member jury comprising Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al-Nahyan, chairman of Alliances for Global Sustainability, founder of UAE Unlimited, an art collector, and board member of the British Museum and Centre Pompidou; Guilhem Andre, director of scientific, curatorial, and collection management at Louvre Abu Dhabi; Maya Allison, chief curator at New York University Abu Dhabi and founding executive director of the NYUAD Art Gallery; Sophie Mayuko Arni, exhibition curator and founding editor of Global Art Daily; and Yuko Hasegawa, research professor at Kyoto University and former director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. 

BY: The Times Union