ESSAYS

01/ Mysterious Windows - Another way of Being for the World

From Stain to the Thing

Leonardo da Vinci tells in his notes about his theory of painting as follows.

…the stains on the wall, in the plaster mixed with crushed stones we can see the scenes, animals, soldiers and faces of people. We can restore them into the works of perfection just as we can hear countless names and words in the sound of bells…

This story about Leonardo da Vinci is highly suggestive. What is around us are actually countless stains. And it is us who gather them into things. And we can gather them however we want. Da Vinci called this act restoring.

By this act, things are interrelated further more and finally assemble into the world around us. This act is too strong and a lot of people think this way so that we accept this world around us as a reality very naturally.

However, we know that it is all fake. We know there is another way of being for the world somewhere else. At some point, this sequence of actions may stop and mysterious things can be seen through the gaps in the loosen restraints. The magic can dissolve and the stains which had been held together as things can be released back into stains again. When this happens, people often say things as ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’.

Now how can we get closer to this mysterious another way of being for the world.

If we think honestly, we just need to lose the subject that is organising the stain into the thing. In fact, in the world of art, there have been technical attempts to obscure the subjectivity of the subject by giving it over to something else, or by increase the subject into great numbers.

However, did it succeed? … I don’t think so. One reason is that once a picture that is made in this way is put onto the wall of a gallery and fit into an appreciative frame work, people must re-organise it into something in this world. The power of people organizing is that strong.

Another reason is that ‘another way of being of the world’ is not to be in such place where things were just split apart into stains and falling into pieces. It can only be seen in the act of ‘organising- releasing’. And it shows itself as a glimpse in the fleeting moments.

From Thing to a Stain

After the 7th of April 2020, I was disconnected from people and start to lose my sense of time…

I started remote work and stopped going into the office or having meeting with colleagues. The tennis school I was attending was closed then. I did not have chance to meet friends as I was refraining from going out for a drink or dinner with them. There was no going out into cities by trains.

Life like this continued for a month, and it was May. I was dozing off one day…

…I suddenly woke up, the light green and pale yellow stains were spread in front of me. Looking at it carefully, I realized that it was my windows in the living room where I was lying down. I could see the plants, buildings and washings. They were reflecting the bright sunshine of the afternoon or penetrated by the light, and it pierced my body as a vividly coloured arrow…

Those were mysterious windows… it was not the windows that I who usually have meetings with colleagues at work ‘see’, nor ones I who go to tennis on Sundays, go for a drink with friends and go for a city walk in a crowd ‘see’. It was an actual ‘windows’ that was seen as a glimpse where all the meanings were loosen for a moment…

Those windows ‘came into my heart’. ..I thought it was beautiful… I do know these windows. These are what I have always been searching for… I have to draw this…this time for sure…

ESSAYS CONTENT