In the “Ma,” Seeing Begins
In Japanese, the word ma (間) is difficult to translate, yet rich with meaning. It can refer to a spatial “interval,” a temporal “moment,” the “relationship” between people, or the emotional “distance” between things. It is a kind of movement within stillness, a silence that speaks between words. In Eastern philosophy, ma is not simply emptiness — it is a state filled with potential and transformation, a space of ambiguity and possibility before form is fixed or meaning is defined.

This exhibition, titled Ma, gathers the works of three Japanese artists — Satoshi Yasuda, Misato Kurimune, and Nobuyuki Osaki — under this shared sensibility. Their practices do not aim to recreate visual reality but instead open up the perceptual gaps between time and awareness, image and memory. Each artist, in their own way, invites viewers into a domain where seeing is delayed, displaced, or unfocused — a realm of ma, where meaning is not imposed but emerges slowly through presence and imagination.

Tomoshi YASUDA reconstructs visual instability through pixelated imagery. His works, caught between deconstruction and reassembly, generate a perceptual hesitation. Viewers must move between distance and proximity to gradually piece together the image’s outline — yet the reconstruction is never complete. The image itself seems to resist understanding. This unstable visual process embodies ma — a tension between image and meaning that becomes the essence of the viewing experience.

Misato KURIMUNE evokes the fragility of memory and the residue of images. Using lenticular lenses, she creates dynamic portraits that shift and dissolve depending on the viewer’s angle. Like memory — fragmented, elusive, and impossible to retrieve in full—her works cannot be grasped all at once. There is a temporal gap between viewer and image, a poetic delay born from movement and stillness. This rhythm of unstable seeing is the perceptual depth that ma makes possible.

Nobuyuki OSAKI’s work brings us closest to the quietude of ma. He transforms visual elements into nearly vanishing traces, leaving large areas of emptiness and blur in his compositions. These images seem to be retreating from reality, leaving only the ghost of memory behind. He does not depict presence, but the state of absence. It is not an ending, but an in-between — a suspended moment between being and nothingness. In this emptiness, the viewer is drawn more deeply into their own inner projections and emotional resonance.

In this exhibition, “seeing” is no longer an act of certainty, but a form of deferred touch — a slow emergence and a waiting for the unknown. Like the spirit of ma, it is not blankness, but a space that holds meaning; not stillness, but a moment charged with quiet motion.

Ma is an exploration of the subtle relationship between time, perception, and vision. When we slow down and enter the spaces these artists have opened, we find that we are no longer just looking at images—we are looking at the act of looking itself. It is a practice of encountering the depths of our own perception.