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 alternate to form a single breath, seeing and being seen merge, and we become one with the world.

​

What emerges in the very midst of that breath is a state that predates the birth of words and judgment—a state in which the world and I are not yet separate. 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.​

​

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.​

​

Tomonari Nakayashiki