Showing It By Masking It: An Art of Reverse Psychology
Toshihiko Washio Translated by Masato Fujii
courtesy of the artist
When you open the gallery’s door and take a quick glance at the wall, some paintings crave your attention. They instantly begin to make eyes at you, pleading: "Please look at me!"
In the case of Yoshio Iwahashi’s exhibition, however, there is no hint of such immediate attention-seeking. At first, you notice little more than the vague existence of some works on the wall. They don’t show any definite contours to give you an idea of what is depicted, just hazy images. So you are compelled to move further into the space, and confront individual works more closely.
You try to see through the layers of mist to find out what’s beneath, and realize that gradually, delicate but solid forms are taking shape on your retina. It appears that the pictures are miniature transparent watercolors of old European cities. Iwahashi first draws some forms in pencil, then brushes on an undercoat of thin sumi ink over these forms. Then he painstakingly develops layers of transparent watercolors over the undercoat, so that his colors don’t lose their original, translucent brightness. The result is graceful, elegant, surprisingly entrancing works.
Iwahashi employs a hidden strategy based on a reverse psychology, which invites the viewer to approach and examine works that are highly self-effacing. This strategy ingeniously exploits that part of viewer’s mind that is unknown to themselves.
Iwahashi explains: "An atmosphere begins to develop the instant I get thinly diluted ink to contact a sheet of pure white paper. As I continue painting, the atmosphere becomes denser, and begins to float over the surface of the sheet. In this atmosphere, everything I depict loses its original color little by little, and mingles into a grey that is an endless trial at transparency, so to speak. The origin of my art is the almost stubborn whiteness and transparency of watercolor paper."
Yoshio Iwahashi at Gallery Miyasaka, Ginza, Tokyo
