In my post “Where Art Begins,” I wrote that breathing precedes theory.
This does not mean that words are unnecessary; rather, it means that breathing comes first—just barely.
To use language to point outside of theory strikes me, even personally, as inelegant.
It feels as inelegant as wearing a happi coat emblazoned with the word iki (“cool”).
Yet as long as the artistic environment is constrained and compressed by theory, I am willing—gladly—to wear that “inelegant” coat.
This attitude resonates with Churchill’s well-known remark on democracy:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.”
In the same way, my position can be stated as follows:
Verbalizing breathing is the worst option—except when art itself is being overtaken by language.
Art makes visible the voices that are erased by the logic of majority rule in democracy.
There is also the saying that authority fears art, and yet depends on it.
Because art destabilizes the foundations of common sense, authority fears it as a threat to its own legitimacy.
But if art is ignored, sensibility cannot be renewed, and authority is left behind by time itself.
In this sense, spaces for encountering art correspond to the blind spots of democracy.
Consider the tea ceremony, which developed during Japan’s Sengoku period: participants set aside their swords and entered a space of equality.
Paradoxically, this gesture was deeply attuned to the subtleties of warfare.
In the same way, confronting art is attuned to the subtleties of democracy.
It serves as a backup for dissenting voices drowned out by numbers.
It does not determine what is right; it preserves difference.
Art fulfills this role not by serving democracy directly, but simply by remaining faithful to its own, singular breath.
By contrast, online exhibitions inevitably resemble catalogs.
They are frozen fragments of information, which can only be thawed through the physical confrontation between a viewer’s body and the material presence of the work.
This is not a defect, but an intrinsic property of the medium.
Even when a practice is minimal, works can still circulate through catalogs.
If a work affects—even slightly—the breathing of the person who acquires it, that voice expands quietly, without spectacle.
In the narrow space where democracy, economics, and artistic theory press against one another, there exists the body and breath of each individual.
In every one of these domains, breathing is always one step ahead.
Forms of expression are not limited to painting.
They include language, music, dance, and many other modalities.
I am not dismissing words.
What I am saying is that, regardless of the limits of theory, there is always a breath that precedes it.
I know this personally.
When depression compelled my brain to demand that everything stop, my heart continued to beat, and I chose to place my hope in the continuation of breathing. That is how I survived.
Without a celebration of life, systems lose their reason for existing.
At least, that is what I believe.
The impulse to live is what we call hope.
I believe this impulse is the source of ordinary art—art that functions as an exception within social systems.