[Gallery Visit No. 147] The Silence of Existence Rising on Drawing Paper — On the 'Night's Shore' Ayano Tada Exhibition —
The Silence of Existence Rising on Drawing Paper
— On the 'Night's Shore' Ayano Tada Exhibition (Gallery FACE to FACE) —
Toshihiko Aman
Sometimes I stop and speak as if addressing the existence that appears there. In that moment, everything, the world, and loneliness embrace you. In that moment, someone from beyond this world calls out. And then, the icon begins to shine. What does the icon, appearing in the dim light like a persona of God, convey to us?
Ayano Tada is a Japanese-style painter who depicts beings that seem like characters from fairy tales of a land of white nights. She uses fine-grained mineral pigments on drawing paper to create images with depth. They resemble plaster reliefs painted on old earthen walls or icons, and also look like phantom animals scribbled by a child with crayons. It is a conversation from the other side, using objects as a medium. Beings from beyond this world become real by leaning on these objects.
Ayano Tada paints as if returning colors that have sealed away concepts back to the rock, back to the earth. Perhaps she is trying to speak of something inexpressible that continues to lurk within the expression, as if humming a requiem.
A painting is sometimes a mediator between ideals and reality. However, before a painting is a connector, it has an existence manifested in its own body—a reality. Icons are acts seeking the resurrection of saints we can no longer meet, and cave paintings and portraits are likely endeavors to send back to oneself the present that is becoming the past, trying to call it back.
Painting and writing poetry are acts of continuously defining myself. Even so, whether I speak to the painting or to anyone else, there is a part of me that remains left behind.
I am only understood through the words I speak and the pictures I draw. Yet, my body feels that something that cannot be fully conveyed always remains. Things I failed to draw, things I failed to say, things I failed to sing—my cowardly self suppresses them by remaining silent. But Tada will likely continue to carve pictures, in place of the voices of silent beings, and in place of the voice of her own soul.
✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎ ✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎ ✳︎✳︎✳︎✳︎
This is Ayano Tada's website.