MtK Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the solo exhibition "The Threshold of Non-Duality" by Shinya Yamada, which will be held from Friday, January 23 to Monday, February 23. An opening reception will take place on the first day, January 23, starting at 5:00 PM.

In the darkness of a cave or beneath one's eyelids, the shadows wriggle as if pulsing.
The paintings of Yamada emerge as intuitive and elusive presences that are difficult to represent. These works may be understood as a direct encounter with a pre-linguistic realm, an experience that touches the threshold of a world that resists verbalization, where attempting to understand the world through thought only leads to retreat. Yamada refers to his act of painting, which involves layering silk, mineral pigments, mud-based paints, glue, and water, as an attempt to depict the "membrane of existence." The layers accumulated on the thin silk canvas lack clear boundaries as they permeate each other and continue to fluctuate endlessly. Yamada relates this fluctuation to the movement of cells.

The concept of "non-duality" is drawn from Buddhist thought, particularly in the context of Zen. It refers to a state of being that transcends dualistic separations, such as subject and object or self and other, that arise before any such distinctions take place. In medieval Japanese painting and crafts, this state of being manifested as an emphasis on blank spaces, blurring, and the materiality of the medium. This approach reflects a philosophical stance that sees the world not as segmented, but as a continuous whole. Furthermore, this idea resonates not only with Eastern philosophy but also with phenomenological perspectives.

In this exhibition, painting stands as a threshold just before thought begins. Viewers and artworks emerge as non-dual beings.

■Artist

Shinya Yamada
Born in Kyoto, 1974. As the production director at the traditional Japanese textile manufacturer Toyowado (Kyoto), Yamada oversaw the restoration of national treasures such as the "Koya" small orange woven brocade (2001), which was dedicated to the Kumano Sanzan, and the "Sun and the Isuzu River" and "Moon and the Isuzu River" (2010) dedicated to the Ise Shrine, among other historically significant textile works. From 2015, Yamada started making his original paintings using dyeing and textile techniques. The major exhibitions include "Pulse of Silence: Drip and Dwell" at Ryosokuin Temple (Kyoto, 2025), "What is Within Us - Representation" at Ryosokuin (Kyoto, 2022), and "Pulse of Silence" at COCON Karasuma (Kyoto, 2021).