Vanishing points do not simply vanish without a trace.  They are invisible places that perpetually attract us and ask us questions.

A vanishing point is an element of the system of visual perspective invented in 15th-century Italy, a device for making the outside world visible.  Because so many artists experimented with perspective, it became the most important condition of visuality in the Renaissance.  It became truly influential to Japan after its opening to the world in the 19th century and was instituted as the foundation of academic art education.  This is the story of perspective when narrowly defined.  I believe, however, that there is a symbolic expansiveness to the term “vanishing point” even now, that goes beyond this historical background.  That is because the vanishing point is an essential condition for making the world visible, although it itself remains invisible.  The friction between the visible and invisible that arises in conjunction with the vanishing point, that is, the conflict played out around the visual, is a difficulty for the visual arts in general and cannot be dismissed as an art historical anecdote.  It does not represent what people have actually seen.  What is represented is something that wasn’t seen.  The things that are represented and made visible call forth the visible world in the viewer.  Artists have continued to search for their own place in this cycle of visibility/invisibility from the past through the present in all parts of the world.

Further, the status of being an artist may potentially permeate a work of art as a kind of vanishing point. This invisible point, which exists opposite our viewing point and makes the work visible, continually calls to the viewer while being immersed in physiological, cultural, and social conditions.

Here we are introducing five Japanese artists, three individual artists and one two-artist group, who came to India this autumn and have created art here during their stay. Takahito Kimura, who looks for correspondences between light and the minds and bodies of people who perceive it, stayed in Santiniketan and held a very interesting workshop there. Takehito Koganezawa spent time in Delhi and produced an image/sound constellation inspired by its chaotic environment.  Novaia Liustra came to Mumbai and made a tree house in collaboration with the local citizens.  These sorts of “traveling works of art” have also been carried out in Japan, Korea, and Canada. Kuri Yorigami, who worked in Ahmedabad, found connections between her interest in textiles and local industry and culture, adding a new dimension to her work.

I would like to thank everyone who comes to the gallery.  It is your viewing points that bring vanishing points into being.  It is your voices and questions that reduce the distance and create strong connections between viewpoints and vanishing points.  I sincerely hope that this exhibition will be a bridge between the cultures of Japan and India, a tangible bridge, whether visible or invisible, between the art world of Mumbai and the contemporary artists of Japan.

Tadashi Kanai