As we look at a painting, we are simultaneously being looked back at by it.
What exists there is not a fixed “seeing/being seen” relationship. Just as inhaling and exhaling are inseparably one, a back-and-forth exchange akin to “breathing” arises between the viewer and the painting. 

 

What emerges in the midst of this breathing is a state prior to words or judgment—a moment when 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 this moment that the essential potential of painting lies.

 

The act of painting, space, light, time, and memory. These do not exist in isolation. While they stand in opposition to one another and harbor contradictions, they also envelop one another within a single, vast interconnection. When all of these elements are bound together in a state of undifferentiation, a “space” emerges that transcends subject and object.

 

What I seek to create are paintings that evoke such a space.
That space appears in this world only through the presence of “you,” the viewer standing before the painting.

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Tomonari Nakayashiki