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David Gibson (b. 1939), Toward Kasuga Shrine, Along Pathways of Lanterns, 08 5042, 2008. Archival pigment print. Collection of the artist. |
DAVID GIBSON: TOWARD KASUGA SHRINE ALONG PATHWAYS OF LANTERNS
Saturday, February 25, 2012 - Sunday, April 29, 2012
DAVID GIBSON DESCRIBES HIS APPROACH to the important Shinto-Buddhist shrine Kasuga Taisha in Nara as he first experienced it in 2005: “Kasuga Shrine is located at the far end of Nara Park. On the walk through Nara Park, one encounters a forest with inviting paths. The ascent toward Kasuga Grand Shrine begins along these paths. The paths merge into an avenue that reveals the first glimpses of ancient stone lanterns; only a few at first, then more and more as one draws nearer to the shrine. Over the centuries moss and lichen have covered the lanterns, creating a patina reflecting their age. Remnants of paper are attached to the stone lantern windows. These fragile papers, with prayers written in calligraphy, linger year-round from festivals when all 3,000 lanterns are illuminated by candles, keeping a centuries-old tradition alive. These visual and historic elements offer a transporting and a calming experience. Kasuga Grand Shrine is a place of refuge and contemplation.”
In 2008 he returned to the location: “Again the shrine offered a feeling of quiet and reflection as I walked along the paths during the early morning. It was the same harmony I felt when I first discovered the shrine. During this visit, the light mist and patches of morning fog were perfect conditions for photography. The Kasuga Shrine photographs are my interpretation of a remarkable place and reflect my respect for the culture that created these sacred sites.”
Gibson’s description introduces a series of photographs from which a selection has been made for this exhibition. Their sequence follows the order of pathway to the shrine, first built in the 8th century to house tutelary and ancestral deities of the powerful Fujiwara clan. The approach, shaded by a towering forest, induces a process of purification, important in all Shinto ritual. The mind dispels clutter and settles into peacefulness, from which awareness heightens.
The lanterns on the approach to Kasuga Shrine were offered over centuries by the faithful, who kept them illuminated. Now the lanterns are lit only at the onset of spring at the time of Setsubun, or “The Bean Throwing Festival,” and again during the Obon Festival, when ancestors return to visit the living.
The pathway along the lanterns is a place of clarity and memory, intimated we hope by your experience of this exhibition.
Quotes are from David Gibson, Kasuga Shrine, 2010, limited edition, published by the artist.
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Chaco Terada (b. 1963), Woman of Red Lily V, 2011. Sumi ink and archival pigment ink on two layers of silk. Collection of the artist. |
WORD SPIRIT: CALLIGRAPHY, PAINTINGS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHACO TERADA
Saturday, February 25, 2012 - Sunday, April 29, 2012
CHACO TERADA CHOSE KOTODAMA—a compound of koto (meaning “word” or “speech”) and tama (meaning “spirit” or “soul”)—for the title of the small retrospective of her work over the past decade on view this spring at the Crow Collection of Asian Art. The words embody an ancient Japanese belief that spiritual power lives in language. In Japanese martial arts, belief in kotodama gives rise to the kiai, or “battle cry,” in aikido; language power is called upon to harmonize mind and body to the task at hand. This alignment of force and technique is also referred to as a “spirit meeting.”
Terada, living in a culture where English is the common tongue, experiences the sensation of kotodama—the spiritual power of words—in calligraphy, where she comes back to the language of her heart. From calligraphy, she has extended this power to other art forms using photography and ink and color on paper and silk. For Terada, kotodama is the feeling that guides her brush, harmonizing body, spirit, and action.
Terada learned calligraphy sitting next to her father, a distinguished Japanese calligrapher. He did not teach her with words but in silence. He instructed her to watch his gestures, to sense speed and hesitation, to feel pressure on the paper or the lift of the brush, and to follow the forms with her own tama, or “qi,” flowing into the brush. He taught her the art of calligraphy by movement of spirit, by issuing the sound of spirit in action. Terada’s own calligraphy, represented in the exhibition by Exercise I, is accomplished and spirited, and it remains her understanding of art, although her media have assumed new roles.
Wanting to explore possibilities of ink, paper, and silk, she moved from calligraphy to couching ink-strokes between layers of silk and paper, revealing the gesture through translucent materials—like thoughts recalled from memory, feelings tinted in another place of awareness. In another group of works on view, she focuses on the character itself, feeling its interaction with space, its flight into being, its lifespan as gesture as limited and unique, a lifespan like our own. One group of photographs follows the trajectory of words written on tightly folded paper as the tension of the folds is released and the paper springs to life to permeate space in dizzying spirals and wacky conversations. In the most recent group of works, she reenacts the horizon between water and sky through layers of silk over ink—sky never quite begins, sea never quite ends.
As in a martial art or calligraphy, Terada's intense concentration and discipline can arm her with powerful lightness, single-pointed intimacy, and harmony. Her works are small, her tools few. They catch us by surprise. We lean in to join the "spirit meeting."
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