Guest Ar8st/Editor: Utako Shindo

I WAS SOAKED IN DARKNESS IN THE LANDSCAPES/SEASCAPES OF USA,AND I AM STILL TOUCHED BY ITS WARM SHADOW.
To spend a year with our legacy of Agnes Mar8n I moved to New Mexico as a resident ofForde Visser Archive Southwest, then I moved back to Tokyo just before the pandemic.

NEWSLETTERFORDE VISSER ARCHIVEIN PRAISE OF DARKNESSMOVING THROUGH DARKNESSJUNE 2020
IMAGE at right: Night Sight #5, 2019
Arroyo Seco, NMPG. 1
MOVING: As we are now discouraged to‘move’, there has been a shared concern withpeople becoming withering and closed.

My familiarity with Linda (a.k.a. Forde) and Agnes began to grow when I no<ced common
elements among each of our families and artworks: trajectories of ‘moving’ across
sheets of paper, canvas, con<nents, islands, oceans and genera<ons over moderniza<on,coloniza<on, wars, globaliza<on and ‘oceaniza<on’. I observe: a line is drawn as mo<on of
space-<me is concentrated, in the midst of ‘moving’ its mo<on cannot be iden<ﬁed witha ﬁxed point, and what it provokes in me is rather e-mo<onal. To be in mo<on can mean
to remain untranslatable: free. Mar<n’s resistance to ‘being given ﬁxed iden<ty’—
whether it is about her gender or art—is not only evident in her words and artworks but
also in her love of driving, sailing and climbing. I really felt so, by tracing her paths in US
where I moved through darkness of a night—its beauty was wordless and unforgeNable.
I, whose mother tongue is Japanese, always remain external/foreign, to some degree, tothe globalized art and academic world. I oQen think of the idea of ‘external’, expressed as
hoka in Japanese, which originally indicates spirit/god/unknown informa<on that driQs

PG. 2and temporarily transfers into hoka-hi (an empty container) or hokahi-bito (someone
who is socially marginal, such as a bard or an orphan).* Importantly this temporal

TOUCHING : While ‘touch’ is regulated

embodiment is considered a birth of art in the ancient Japan. And, hoka, also meaningclinically, I think of Linda’s saying “Drawing isTouch”, which simultaneously associates withan in<mate ‘touch’ of my grandmother.

‘foreign’ today, includes a body like mine in these objects (hoka-hi, hokahi-bito). Joining
Linda in ‘dead man’s ﬂoat’ last November in Venice presented me an image of a ﬂoa<ng

GROWING: It has been, in a sense, a rescue
process to spend <me with my grandmother,Agnes and Linda, as more nuanced
understandings of darkness and love havegrown in me.

empty boat, like hoka-hi, which resonates with a survival mode discussed by thearchitect, Arata Isozaki**: not to ride on the waves of the globaliza<on but ﬂoat inbetween the waves. Closing my eyes, puWng my face in the water—the ocean was, then,dark—, I was held between being panicked and calm, as if being in mid-crea<vity, where I
struggle to ar<culate something non-ar<cula<ve or translatable. But there was also aluminous sense, like the possibility of transforming it into a poe<c expression, throughwhich ‘I’ is emp<ed and let go with the current, as though being metamorphosed.
Can our mo<va<on of ‘moving’ not be capitalis<c, touris<c, na<onalis<c but…
sympathe<c? What we share in this <me is a grief… because of our love for someone. Itcould be just a prayer to picture that love is universal, abstract emo<on (as Agnes did)
yet…, May it pervade the world! Love shall be ‘mo<on’ expressed to move life forward: emo<on that enable us to remain alive. In her Un-tled (LOVE) at the Harwood, the seriesof various shades of blue and the successive lines of concentrated mo<on together draw
an opening path, which is not for any transac<on but purely direc<onal, poin<ng to theopen air. Like the Great North Road in Chaco Canyon—its night was the darkest, as I was

my copy of Un-tled (Love) by Agnes Mar<n(acrylic on linen, 60”×60”, 1993-1994), pencil,
color pencil, pastel on paper, 2020

told—, which had no use except indica<ng where they/we are from. Religion of Love,
Agnes’ statement wriNen in her late years, begins: “In the beginning, there was only love
and it ﬁlled the world. That’s how it was in the beginning”.****Trans. the author, Seigo Matsuoka, “Ma= shu to kyaku no kouzou [Ma=the structure of object and subject],” in Ma - 20 years on, Tokyo; Tokyo
University of Arts, 2000**’ISOZAKI Arata: SOLARIS, Talk session: "Computer-Aided City,” 2014 January 25, Inter Communica8on Center, Tokyo***Agnes Mar8n & Richard Tucle (Illustra8on), Religion of Love, Köln; Slp edi8on, Walther König, 2016

TOUCHING IN DARKNESSOn the day before my grandmother passed away in 2018, her hand subtly held backmine. We were alone together in a nursing home, with our hands under the blanket andher eyes closed, so this ‘touch’ was memorized warmly in darkness. I was to departGesture of Shadows, video s<ll, 2016

overseas next day. I sensed her going, so I wanted to spend -me with her. Her last touch
was as though her leWng me go on my path, Australia, then to US (where her father
worked for the Pan Paciﬁc Expo 1915 before his un<mely death). Later I realized that thedate of her death is the Agnes’s birthday and they were also of the same genera<on.

In Santa Fe, I felt Agnes’ ‘touch' a few <mes, soQly guiding my path. I had so many ‘coincidental’ encounters with events, objects andpeople, through which I felt her closer and closer. Towards the end of my stay in NM, the ar<st who knew her told me, “You have met
Aggie, haven’t you?”. I nodded in agreement with her touching me, which made me ask, why did she? What does she like me to tell?…
perhaps not mine but our story, our legacy. Dark and Love are both beau<ful and challenging; the two biggest emo<ons that touchedand moved me in USA. They encourage me to cul<vate a poe-c place, which resists being swallowed up by the mere economical
exchanges of meanings or means, instead ﬁlled with fer<le silence and nuanced shadows, from which art engenders.
"Space is essen<ally darkness… absolute blackness is the background essen<al to the manifesta<on of all phenomena”.* In the reﬂec<onof Junichiro Tanizaki’s classic essay, In praise of shadows, Isozaki observes ‘light ﬂashes’ in what Tanizaki designates as ‘darkness’ in theJapanese tradi<onal architecture (brightened in the process of moderniza<on; westerniza<on that bleaches everything white). Theseﬂashes could be “fantas<c extremes”** that Agnes an<cipated in the dark, leaving us with ‘shadows’, not as the projected but“everything leQ over when light cuts through darkness”.* The recent tragedy has drawn my aNen<on to black pain<ng (Abstract pain-ng)
by Ad Reinhardt (Agnes’ mentor/friend in her NY years, not to men<on): how subtle <nts of other colors enrich darkness and give depth—space. Tanizaki, when he writes his fascina<on to colored skins, similarly ar<culates their depth being given by <nts of colors such asyellow (to which I consider black included).

GROWING IN DARKNESS
Linda expresses in the video interview***, “One of the things I think of as rescue orknowing something is about <me, about spending <me, with something”. And thisdrawing seems to embody my <me spent with darkness by moving, touching and‘growing’. Before the Dawn, I drew luminous shadow-light in darkness of the night, whoselight source travelled from the distant street and through the plum tree at the back porchof FVA Southwest, reaching the studio wall. Its ephemeral trajectory took my breath away.
And I wanted to draw this moving shadow-light in darkness with the night breeze, as
though touching someone whom I love.
The orchard in FVA is another element that nurtures my familiarity with Linda and Agnes.
The house where I grew up in Tokyo had an old apricot tree which signaled seasonalchanges and bridged genera<onal interac<ons for our family. Agnes wished her ashes tobe buried under the apricot tree at the Harwood. And some of Linda’s mother’s ashes are,too, put under the apple tree just outside the front window of FVA. One of our neighbors(they all appreciate the orchard!) kept the seeds out of the fruits for my farewell present.
She told me to place them ﬁrst in a dark and cool place, like the soil underground.
Seemingly boring objects soon metamorphosed to be roots then sprouts. ‘Darkness is thefounda<on of all phenomena’, which is neither metaphorical nor conceptual, I realized. It
is true of our life that starts to grow in darkness.
Before the dawn, watercolor, color pencil,pencil, pastel on paper, 41x26 inch, 2019

I observe the strong sense of division and exclusion in the human world today,‘contributed’ by those subjects who are so doubqul and fearful of changes:
transforma<on of the world and metamorphosis of themselves. It does require ourpa<ence to spend <me with something that may recall our trauma<c past, but when the
moment comes, like a sprout coming out, it shall giQ us with surprise, beauty, wonder andjoy. While we wait for it, we can also cul<vate sensi<vi<es that will engender ‘boredom’—a neutral space or empty space that allows for things to enter—without doubt and fear.
Now, my ‘mundane’ dream is growing, to make my home somewhere open so thesesaplings can grow and fruit. I will wait for that to happen, pa<ently and lovingly—withdeep gra<tude for everyone’s support and inspira<on to my life in New Mexico, US.
*Arata Isozaki,“Yami no Kukan [Space of Darkness: spiritual structure of illusion],” trans. Hiroshi Watanabe, Arata Isozaki, eds. Ken Tadashi Oshima
and Arata Isozaki, London: Phaidon, 2008** Agnes Mar8n, "On the Perfec8on Underlying Life,” Wri-ngs / SchriSen, ed. Dieter Schwarz,
Osnildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje-Cantz Verlag, 1992***as part of Seat of Learning exhibi8on by Jane Lackey and Thomas Lehn, 2020, UCCS
Galleries of Contemporary Art (hcps://vimeo.com/398393756/9cf2e24679)