Natsuyuki Nakanishi described the place where painting comes into being as a space that emerges between two opposing poles, writing of “carrying a sheet of drawing paper, for example, from a forest to the water’s edge (as the conjunction of two places in a drawing).” For Nakanishi, the shoreline was a site where two different worlds—land and sea—meet. Painting, likewise, existed in the narrow zone between two extremes. The act of drawing or painting was a process of moving between these two realms and bringing them together within a single field.
Accordingly, Nakanishi paid close attention to the distance between himself and the canvas, the placement of his body, and the movements and vibrations involved in the act of painting. The work was not simply an image fixed on a surface, but a record of the body’s movement through space.
The two large rings seen in this work intersect and gradually converge into a single form. This relationship recalls the L-shaped motifs that appear in works such as Painting on the Edge Ⅻ, and Work－L.ℓ.R.Ⅰ. These motifs visualize moments when separate lines, surfaces, or spaces come into contact, overlap, and begin to merge into one.
Nakanishi painted without directly touching the canvas, attaching a brush to the end of a pole approximately two meters in length. The X-shaped marks and particle-like traces that appear on the surface are records of movements generated by the body. Through these marks, he pursued the essential flatness and frontal nature inherent to painting. More than depicting forms, the work focuses on the moment when two distinct elements encounter one another, overlap, and generate a new pictorial space.