Yoshinobu Kato drew nothing but "dots" all the way up until entering his 70s just a few years ago. Yet now, the artist says he has switched from "dots" to "lines." Just what is signified by this dramatic turn in which all the "dots" have vanished from his paintings?

Kato's dots are dots of life. He learned about life and death as a teenager, and that is when he encountered "dots." The scion of a wealthy fishing family, he fell in love with the 16-year-old daughter of a servant. However, the girl was unable to acclimate herself to her surroundings, and she committed suicide. The youth learned of the existence of an "invisible air" that drives people to their deaths, and he ventured deep into the mountains and attempted to take his own life. The young man lay on his back in the snow, where, feeling the warmth of the snow surrounding his body, he awaited death. Then, from out of nowhere, an insect appeared above his head and the youth's consciousness slipped away from him into the sky above. What he saw there was black "dots," namely the strange sight of these dots falling down toward him in rapid succession. His aimless soul was utterly captivated, and when he came to his senses he had been rescued from his death. Those "dots" were merely shadows cast by some crystals of snow. But they were etched into the young man's mind as a supreme presence pointing convincingly to an "invisible air." That is the origin of Kato's "dots." Right then and there, Kato made it his life mission to comprehend "air" and to master "dots."

In order to help him grasp "air," fate led Yoshinobu Kato to become an artist. He met Kinjiro Kida, who produced works in snowy fields without saying a word. The painter, who had been the model for Takeo Arishima's "The Agony of Coming into the World," quietly taught him what being an artist meant. When Kato went to take the admissions exam for the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (Geidai), he met Sanko Inoue, who told him, "You can learn more by drawing the growth of one flower over and over than you would at Geidai." So he became a private pupil of Inoue, and by continually drawing nothing but circles, triangles, and squares, he gained a deep sense of abstract concepts. He established a rapport with sculptor Shin Higuchi and lived in the United States for a time, but then he awakened to the Oriental view of life and returned to Japan. He then hid out in a temple and continued to draw while subsisting on charitable donations, but he left the temple when he began to suffer from malnutrition. It was only after drifting for a while that he finally met Hideji Hisatsune, the greatest landscaper in modern times. At that point, Kato was instructed in the esoteric techniques of making gardens.
?Ever since then, Kato has made dots in accordance with the principles of garden creating -- namely, in crossways, diagonal, and radial patterns. That is why he has no worries whatsoever when he is making the dots. He just single-mindedly places dots on the canvas. As he puts down these dots, Kato reads the invisible air. "By drawing dots over and over," he says, "there is something that comes into view." Crossways, diagonal, and radial patterns constitute the aesthetics of bodily sensation. This is not a philosophy as one would refer to it in the Western sense. When a person merges completely as one with nature, the universe in its entirety flows into him. And that is precisely why he is able to discern the invisible air.

The theme of this exhibit is "wind." Kato depicted the "invisible air" in his third air series, and by shifting from dots to lines, here he is attempting to convey the flowing wind. "Lines" are neither more nor less than the "radial" component of the crossways, diagonal, and radial principles, and as such, they constitute "paths." There are some "lines" that only an artist who has mastered "dots" can draw, and there are some "paths" that represent penetrating insights.

Creatures in the natural world live by perceiving microscopic changes in the air around them. They say that if you set a butterfly free inside a room, you can tell which way the wind is blowing in the room. The butterfly does an outstanding job of perceiving even an impalpable breeze and floating on it. Kato perceives that breeze, or wind, in the form of "dots" and expresses it using "lines." Points can express lines, lines can express surfaces, surfaces can express space, and space can express the cosmos. Thus the crossways, diagonal, and radial principles are all inherent in "dots," which means there is no limit to what dots can create.
?"Wind" consists of air but is not limited to it. Winds from afar carry many different things our way, and they sweep away unclean things. However, modern man has lost the ability to communicate with nature and consequently cannot read the "wind." As a result, he is always uncertain. An intangible uncertainty has forced its way into the dark depths of our hearts, repeatedly stretching and growing, each time shrinking us just a little. When one reads the wind and becomes one with the universe, then he or she can be enraptured by a self that is as big as the universe. Yoshinobu Kato's "Wind Series" is a collection of works that enable us to hear, in a refreshing, invigorating way, the voice of the universe.