Statements
Towards Space
“Painting is such a cool hobby, and I can see that it’s helping your practice in architecture a lot.”
I have been engaging in architecture and painting for seven years, and I always run into architects who think pursuing painting as an architect is nothing but a “hobby” unless you have a degree in art too. I cannot help being shocked by how ignorant architects are. Because, to me, what they are actually saying is that Le Corbusier painted just to pleasure himself. Regardless of focus or style, architects and painters look at the same horizon: to create a spatial illusion. Crossing over these two art forms is rather an intensive journey to seek truth in space, what we actually see and what it means.
Space, by definition, involves a three-dimensional universe, and we humans perceive it through our eyes as a two-dimensional image in our mind. We tend to think that painting is something to look at, however, what painting does is the same as what humans do: making a two-dimensional “image” out of actual space. We see that phenomenon through our eyes “with” painting, which is most likely ambiguous and ephemeral. When it stays in your mind, it becomes a memory.
My interest towards pictorial art has always been the creation of depth on a flat surface. Especially when I engage in abstract paintings, I find myself in the middle of nowhere, which is somewhat familiar to my memory. What I depict on a surface is the “observation” of memory in multi-dimensional space where figuration and abstraction hold their hand and throw fists at each other. Practising architecture is nothing different in this regard: architects design a space with actual construction material yet try to create a space that may not be explanatory. Moreover, there is always a chance occurrence that artists cannot control even if they think they are handling it.
Through the reciprocal movement between “architecture and painting” or “the Principle of sufficient reason and unreason”, I believe we can provoke the deception of space we see with our eyes. I am not sure if I ever witness the moment it happens in the future, but I’ll be waiting for it while I paint and build.
Atsushi Onoe, 2023, Basel
Other articles
– Notes on previous works