THE EDGE

変わりゆくことの際

21.08.2025 

Where something ends and is not yet something else.

There is a moment in the trajectory of existence when nothing is yet decided. A silent threshold where form is no longer what it once was, yet not yet something new. Here is where the sound of change is felt. Not a thunderous upheaval, but a subtle undercurrent: a tension beneath the skin, a slow crack, a held breath. We are no longer who we were, but we do not yet know who we are becoming. In this unstable space lies the possibility of truly feeling alive. Because the edge is not a place to cross. It is a place to inhabit. It is neither departure nor arrival, but that dizzying moment when the wind pushes at your back and everything inside you quivers. Your knees tremble not from fear, but from the vertigo of the unknown. This is the precipice, and here we stand, hands grasping the invisible railing of existence. Pulled toward the void, terrified of it, curious to know what would happen if we let ourselves fall. Nietzsche wrote, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.” But this is neither threat nor condemnation. It is the echo of a deeper truth. To look into the abyss is to behold oneself, stripped of illusion. To see what remains when every mask has fallen and every voice has gone silent. This is the moment of raw recognition, imperfect, human, and intensely alive.

Let us analyze the scene. What happens in that instant just before the leap, when everything remains possible and yet nothing has happened? A suspended space appears, almost unreal. A breach where time expands and reality loses its contours, as if the world itself holds its breath with us. A heartbeat before the gesture, a breath before the rupture. In that fragile, pure instant, something rare and vertiginous occurs. One feels free. Truly free. As if the body suddenly has no weight and the soul floats on the border between the desire to flee and the need to stay. Nothing holds us, nothing obliges us. We might leap and let everything fall. Or we might stay and confront the void with presence alone. It is in the silent oscillation between doing and not doing, between holding on and letting go, that our deepest choice takes shape. That is where the root of our power lies: free will. It is not necessary to take the leap. Sometimes all that is required is to remain on the edge, waiting patiently and fiercely to make peace with oneself. For it is there that real change begins. Not with a spectacular act, but through a tremor that courses through us without permission. We feel tension accumulate in the bones, the heart beat too fast, the skin quiver as if listening, every pore opening to the world. Something inside begins to shift slowly, silently, like a crack widening in the walls of a house. We allow what is no longer needed to fall away. The fragments of a worn-out identity crumble like old skins shed, like masks that no longer resemble us. A silent, almost invisible, yet radical shedding. Change does not always require motion. Sometimes it happens in stillness, remaining unmoving while everything inside stirs. We feel the dull ache of what is dying and the timid tenderness of what is being born. At that extreme point, where identity wavers and the will is stretched like a rope at the breaking point, we can hear the raw, naked sound of our own becoming. A deep, muted roar rising from the depths of being. The sound of transformation and fracture. A possibility opening wide that can terrify us. Yet it is exactly in that held, fragile, violent instant that we discover ourselves alive. Not whole. Not saved. But alive. Alive in the most authentic, rugged, truthful way. More conscious of ourselves than ever before.

The precipice is not a comfortable space. But it is real. It is true. And just when the void seems ready to swallow everything, a thin, almost imperceptible fissure opens. A faint light that neither promises nor consoles, but simply exists. A threshold between what we have been and what we might become. A moment suspended and tense, pulsing with exposed skin and a listening heart. A moment in which everything is silent, yet everything also screams. Where the gaze, deprived of all anchors, rests on the self and recognizes, without defenses or illusions, its own reflection in the void. It is there that something cracks, reveals itself, and dissolves. It is there that the deep and unmistakable trace of that passage is born. Not an epiphany, but a slow, sacred burn that marks skin and soul. A wound that does not heal, yet transforms. It reminds us that we were truly there, on the edge of our own becoming. And we did not return from that threshold unchanged. M.A.D.S. Art Gallery, with “THE EDGE – 変わりゆくことの際”, invites each artist to inhabit that unstable boundary. To linger in the suspended breath before change. To create not from what is complete, but from the vibrant uncertainty of the incomplete. To express through art what occurs when one is suspended, listening for what has yet to emerge. Because it is precisely in that place, the edge, where truth reveals itself unveiled. We are neither whole nor perfect. We are fragile, yet undeniably true. And for a moment, just one moment, we were freer than ever. Free not because we chose, but because we dared to stay. Because we looked into the void and allowed ourselves to be seen. Because, in the trembling of that threshold, we accepted not knowing who we would become, yet chose to be fully present. Present with our heartbeat, with our skin, with our fear. Present and alive.

Concept by Lisa Galletti Senior Art Curator