As we look at a painting, we are simultaneously being looked back at by it.
What exists there is not a fixed relationship of “seeing and being seen.” Just as inhaling and exhaling alternate to form a single breath, seeing and being seen merge together, and we become one with the world.

 

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

 

The act of painting, space, light, time, and memory—these do not exist in isolation. Though they contain contradictions, they 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. That space appears in the world only when you stand before the painting.

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Tomonari Nakayashiki