Materiality

Opening

The fifth gate.

The first four gates were passed with the eyes.
We looked at color and line and void and arrangement.

This gate is passed with the hands.

What was it painted with.
That is the question.

Paint is color and it is matter.

Seen as color it lies thinly on the surface.
Seen as matter it is stacked on the surface.

What is stacked has thickness.
Thickness makes shadow.

The painting begins to catch light on its own.

Material is usually got from that land.
There is paint bought from far away, but what a painter's hand learned was what lay near.

Soil and ash.
Straw and stone.
Lead and ice.

Three people stand before this gate.

Kiefer carried the ground onto the surface.
Goldsworthy set the surface on the ground.
Van Gogh made the paint itself into matter.

Three directions part.
And all three touch fūdo.

This part has no witness for the other side.

In the four earlier parts there was one person who shook the proposition.
Color had Munch and line had Chusa.
The void had Kapoor and grammar had Gauguin.

Here there is none.

Because matter does not lie.
Soil is soil and lead is lead.
It cannot hide where it came from.