Presence and Impermanence

Presence and Impermanence engages directly with mono no aware — the Japanese aesthetic concept of pathos in the transience of things — through ink and paper layered on [washi](/glossary/washi). The title pairs two states that, in Japanese aesthetic philosophy, are inseparable: what is present is so by virtue of its impermanence, and what is impermanent announces its presence most acutely at the moment of disappearance. Anczelowitz's use of ink on washi is materially appropriate to this theme: ink bleeds, spreads, and fades differently across washi's fibrous surface than on Western papers, and washi itself is subject to thinning, translucency, and deterioration. Applied paper fragments introduce layers that both reveal and obscure what lies beneath, so that the composition contains zones of visible presence and visible erasure simultaneously. The work resists resolution into a fixed image, instead holding open the condition of transition.