"Dialogues in Abstraction: East and West" at Tenri Cultural Institute is a group exhibition that illuminates current cultural exchange in the aesthetics of abstract art.
Review of "Dialogues in Abstraction: East & West"
John Kaufman
Cultural Institute is a group exhibition that illuminates current cultural
exchange in the aesthetics of abstract art. As a small exhibition “Dialogues”
can only begin to suggest the number of artists working in this cross-cultural
mode, but the exhibition emphasizes the vitality in this approach and
demonstrates that abstraction is still fertile, imaginative ground for artistic
exploration.
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Most art today is concept driven and current abstraction
is no exception. Japanese and Korean artists use western models that have been
absorbed and made their own. Jinsoo Kim uses the conceptualist/modular model
that has been popular in Korea since the 1970s. His assemblage use of white
dovetails traditional Korean color coding smoothly with American minimalist
aesthetics; in old Korea white was the color of everyday clothing and purity.
His use of paper also indicates traditions such as origami. Jungwook Grace Rim
combines a traditional Korean love of nature, circle symbolism and calligraphy
with contemporary gestural biomorphic styles developed by U.S. artists in the
late 1980s and 1990s. Masashi Kikuchi’s art may be the most traditional in
terms of Asian aesthetics. But his painstakingly painted vertical hanging silk
scrolls forsake gesture for overall decorative motifs developed from
contemporary process-driven art.
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Artists from the “west” often use Asian spiritual concepts
to frame their work. Cliff Smith uses the idea of mandalas and their ritual
making to create time-intensive mosaics made of dyed egg-shells. He overlays
these “meditation wheels” with an African American love of bold color
contrasts. However Smith fuses these colors with Hindu symbolism. Orlanda
Brugnola also incorporates Hindu content into her art. Her multi-layered
painting Amarnath Vision presents the Hindu generative creative principle through a vision
related to Shiva. These two references to Indian art by Smith and Brugnola
represent a split with European art and philosophical traditions. Hindus
believe in the iconic presence of the spirit in art where through darshan
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contact with the Godhead. According to these ideas art is more about being than
about representation, an idea that has divided European Christian thought since
the iconoclasts.
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Demetrius Manouselis paints on paper combining modern
abstract imagery with compositional and color subtleties. In many ways his
painting combines expressionistic forms with those of Greek temple friezes. His
inclusion in this exhibition seems out of place until we remember that even
though ancient Greece is considered the fountainhead of western civilization,
it was actually in many ways more Asian than European.
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East/West approaches also convene through process. Rim
describes her acrylic and oil technique to be meditative and based on the
Buddhist principle of “emptying the mind.” Brugnola refers to pilgrimage and
meditation as inspiration for her acrylic painting. Kikuchi, Smith, and Kim all
use meticulous, time-consuming processes that slow the artistic process to what
could be called a meditative state. Through repetition and pattern the art of
these artists invites the eye to travel through space and time. Such
process-oriented works, especially those of Kikuchi and Smith, reflect the
Asian elevation of craft techniques to the level of fine art. Although the term
“decorative” has been resisted in twentieth century modern abstraction,
contemporary artists take a much more Asian approach to imagery which might be
so labeled. Research in the histories of design and art has done much to prove
that the modern bias against the decorative involved masculine judgements to
prevent “the feminine” from gaining prominence in art and design. The artists
in “Dialogue,” like many of their contemporaries, care little for such
distinctions.�
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As curator Thalia Vrachopoulos emphasizes in her catalog
essay, cross-fertilizations between Asian and European cultures have been with
us for centuries. “Dialogues” demonstrates that cross-cultural exchange in
abstraction has existed long enough to establish fluid and easily navigated
traditions. The exhibition also shows that designations such as “east” and
“west” have become less cultural barriers to understanding than indicators of
artistic preferences and less indicators of place and style than of states of
mind.
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As the art world becomes more and more an international
diaspora because of travel, media and contemporary exhibition practices,
identities based on defining national stylistic traits become stereotypic and
lose their meaning in vague generalities. While one can with certainty identify
past cultural traditions, contemporary art becomes more and more a specific
convergence of influences on individual artists than on ethnic groups. Today it
is difficult to recognize categorically what makes contemporary art Korean,
Greek, African American or Japanese.
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Artists who know the contemporary art scene, or are
familiar with only parts of it, whether through media, study or looking,
incorporate the art world’s trends into their work. The audience for
contemporary art has done the same. Because this process is disjointed and
fragmentary, art movements or styles no longer develop. Instead artists now
group themselves, often unknowingly, through thematic similarities. Although
this destroys artistic community as we have known it, there is obviously
dialogue happening. No longer based mainly on place, this dialogue is a
function of the individual and contemporary mobility and access to information.
This is the dialogue evident in the exhibition at Tenri.
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