When we look at a painting, we, too, find ourselves being looked back at by the painting.

What exists there is not a fixed “seeing/being seen” relationship. Just as inhaling and exhaling alternate to form a single breath, seeing and being seen merge into one another, and we become one with the world.

What emerges in the very midst of that breath is a state—prior to the birth of words or judgment—in which the world and I are not yet separated. It is, so to speak, a moment of “undifferentiated subject and object.” I believe that it is precisely in that moment that the core of the possibilities opened up by a painting lies.​

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The act of painting, space, light, time, and memory—these do not exist in isolation but, while harboring contradictions, envelop one another within a single, vast interconnection.

When all of these are seamlessly united, a “space” that transcends subject and object emerges.

What I seek to create are paintings that evoke such a space.

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Tomonari Nakayashiki