Spirituality, Sexuality, and Artful Reproduction
Agnes Arellano and Pardo de Leon’s Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses
The discovery of the general in the particular is a long-running tradition w/in multiple traditions: the incomprehensible totality of God compressed into the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton, iconic coats of arms w/in w/c are entire genealogies, Sol LeWitt’s cube finding infinite variations in his analytical minimalism, the revolutionary notion of fractals in mathematics where the whole is found in every part, the very idea of DNA where identities are contained in the minutiae of the flesh, etc.
The two-woman exhibit Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses furthers this tradition by searching for singularity of spirit in what seems to be the dull plainness of a drone, dragging in its reproduction of a single sound, one classic example of which is the sacred syllable om. Opening on May 23, 2009 at the Galerie Hans Brumann in Greenbelt 5, the show references Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tantric mysticism in two media: Agnes Arellano’s sculptures and Pardo de Leon’s abstract paintings. Two women, two media: the exhibition obviously is at once a celebration and critique of binary oppositions—body and soul, lover and beloved, creator and destroyer, the general and the particular.
Most of all, the yab-yum or father-mother, an old motif which is Arellano’s favorite, but this time with a fresh approach. Here, she continues her search for a personal spirituality, rooted nonetheless in ancient traditions, and makes a negotiation between religion and sexuality—things that have always been mutually exclusive in the ‘postcolonial culture’ she grew up in, sexuality usually negatively perceived as pornographic in the context of religion. Since 1983 when she first expressed visual interest in the image of the yab-yum, she has always mostly worked from research; her current crop of sculptures, however, are drawn from recent travels to India and Bhutan, where images of sexuality are held sacred in the inner sanctum of temples.
Fascinated by encounters with all kinds of people whether in the city or on journeys into deserts, forests, and high mountain regions, De Leon finds common and recurring forms in the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, the Tantric yantras, and in Christian iconography. Crossings between cultures and subcultures, commonalities between Sufis and acid-trippers, the personal bleeding into the mystical—these are the mysterious gray areas De Leon explores in this show. And this is but a continuation of her years of abstract painting as a form of meditation, which over time has been described by critics as a ‘minimalist approach to psychedelia’ and ‘transcendentally modernist.’
OPENING RECEPTION
6:00 pm, Saturday, 23 May 2009
Third Floor, Greenbelt 5, Legaspi Street, Makati City
Telephone (632) 728 2175 • E-mail dididee@hiraya.com
ghb.hiraya.com
Agnes Arellano and Pardo de Leon’s Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses
The discovery of the general in the particular is a long-running tradition w/in multiple traditions: the incomprehensible totality of God compressed into the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton, iconic coats of arms w/in w/c are entire genealogies, Sol LeWitt’s cube finding infinite variations in his analytical minimalism, the revolutionary notion of fractals in mathematics where the whole is found in every part, the very idea of DNA where identities are contained in the minutiae of the flesh, etc.
The two-woman exhibit Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses furthers this tradition by searching for singularity of spirit in what seems to be the dull plainness of a drone, dragging in its reproduction of a single sound, one classic example of which is the sacred syllable om. Opening on May 23, 2009 at the Galerie Hans Brumann in Greenbelt 5, the show references Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tantric mysticism in two media: Agnes Arellano’s sculptures and Pardo de Leon’s abstract paintings. Two women, two media: the exhibition obviously is at once a celebration and critique of binary oppositions—body and soul, lover and beloved, creator and destroyer, the general and the particular.
Most of all, the yab-yum or father-mother, an old motif which is Arellano’s favorite, but this time with a fresh approach. Here, she continues her search for a personal spirituality, rooted nonetheless in ancient traditions, and makes a negotiation between religion and sexuality—things that have always been mutually exclusive in the ‘postcolonial culture’ she grew up in, sexuality usually negatively perceived as pornographic in the context of religion. Since 1983 when she first expressed visual interest in the image of the yab-yum, she has always mostly worked from research; her current crop of sculptures, however, are drawn from recent travels to India and Bhutan, where images of sexuality are held sacred in the inner sanctum of temples.
Fascinated by encounters with all kinds of people whether in the city or on journeys into deserts, forests, and high mountain regions, De Leon finds common and recurring forms in the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, the Tantric yantras, and in Christian iconography. Crossings between cultures and subcultures, commonalities between Sufis and acid-trippers, the personal bleeding into the mystical—these are the mysterious gray areas De Leon explores in this show. And this is but a continuation of her years of abstract painting as a form of meditation, which over time has been described by critics as a ‘minimalist approach to psychedelia’ and ‘transcendentally modernist.’
OPENING RECEPTION
6:00 pm, Saturday, 23 May 2009
Third Floor, Greenbelt 5, Legaspi Street, Makati City
Telephone (632) 728 2175 • E-mail dididee@hiraya.com
ghb.hiraya.com
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