Takayoshi Ueda

VISUALIUM Series: The Double Structure of Faith and Perception

For over two decades, I have navigated two seemingly contradictory worlds: the "visible activity" of engaging with a local community, and the "solitary creation" of pursuing a universal visual experience.

【Resilience and Creative Trust】

My regional activities (teaching, volunteering) function as a means of public engagement, akin to the Buddhist concept of Upaya ( expedient means). In contrast, my core creation emerges from a long practice of confronting extreme uncertainty―sending paintings abroad with no mentor, limited English, and very real risks of loss or fraud. What sustained me was not external validation but an inner faith in the dignity and resilience of human creative energy itself. This internal framework allows me to work with the unseen, the unspoken, and the fragile structures beneath perception.

【The Truth of White and the Artist's Core】

In my early thirties, I met the only artist who ever articulated the essence of my work: “You paint what cannot be seen.” This singular recognition defined my direction.
If my regional work serves as the Upaya, the VISUALIUM series―my creative core―is the materialization of the ultimate truth, which I call the White Dharma (白法).

【The Phenomenology and Sculptural Method of White】

In recent years, this quest has crystallized into the subject of White. For me, white is not absence but an active field where tensions, layers of memory, and invisible architectures surface. It is the boundary just before meaning forms―the light pressure that allows shapes to be carved from within.

I treat this white as a living space, employing a sculptural method to excavate form. Technically, the work begins with the "predictive sight" of AI-generated imagery and is re-embodied through months of execution, centering on a 1:1 mixture of Silver White (Cremnitz) and Titanium White. This blend establishes a double structure of depth and impact, causing white to function not as "description," but as a zone of reaction where human sensibility confronts algorithmic logic.

VISUALIUM is a record of the life-force that insists on creating, negotiating between vulnerability and clarity. It is a proposal to a visually exhausted contemporary world for the recovery of perceptual depth.

【The Necessity of Painting: From Information to Perception】

My earlier works were an exploration of the density and entropy of visual information. However, the VISUALIUM series marks a vital evolution: a shift from the creation of "images" to the construction of "perception."

 
While AI can generate infinite visual material, I view these as mere "snapshots of desire"―immediate, consumable outputs that lack the temporal depth and structural necessity of a true painting. For me, painting is not just a medium; it is a final verification device.

 
Unlike an AI’s singular, error-free output, my process involves a continuous series of physical judgments―re-adjusting hues, layering pigments three times, and responding to the subtle "deviations" of the Master Mix under specific light.

 
VISUALIUM is the manifestation of this irreversible human process. It is the act of transforming AI-generated visual chaos into a universal structure of perception through the disciplined, physical labor of painting.

【Creation vs. Authorship: Painting as a Confrontation with AI】

My practice is grounded in a clear distinction between creation and authorship. Artificial intelligence is capable of generating images―producing unprecedented visual forms from a blank state―and in this sense, it is undeniably a “creative” machine.

 
However, generation alone does not constitute painting. Painting begins at the moment when an image is subjected to necessity: when choices become irreversible, when structure replaces probability, and when visual balance is no longer accidental but inevitable.

In my work, AI-generated images function as raw visual material rather than finished propositions. They offer "abundance without responsibility." I intervene precisely at this point―where possibility must be narrowed, where excess must be refused, and where the image must withstand duration.

 
Through painting, I reconstruct these generated images into spaces that AI cannot reach: spaces governed by perceptual tension, material resistance, and the "slow logic of the human body." The result is not a collaboration with AI, but a confrontation with it―one in which painting asserts its role as a medium of decision, limitation, and meaning.