Art is the place where meaning gathers, but never settles.

A surface trembling with something more—not to be seized, not to be named, only met.

Adorno tells us that the artwork is an enigma,

a presence that leans toward us with a certain need—

inviting interpretation, but never allowing us to claim it.

To interpret is to approach, not to possess.

In this way, the artwork lives the same life as the world itself.

David Hinton, in his writings on the Tao, calls it emptiness as generativity—

the open, ever-unfolding field in which all things arise,

take shape, shimmer briefly in their becoming,

and return again to the vast, breathing silence.

Nothing is fixed.

Everything is emergence.

And so the truth of the artwork is not contained within it

like a jewel hidden in stone.

Its truth opens in the space between:

between the seen and the seer,

the brushstroke and the gaze,

the world and the self that beholds it.