Saturday, September 17, 2016

Mind Patterns (Work in Progress)


Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Boundless Light.


(Padmasambhava, The Tibetan Book of the Dead)


Mind Patterns is a series of cameraless photographs/computer constructions which deal with the artist’s inner need to transcend mundane reality in search of the absolute. The work was inspired by Tibetan Buddhist theories regarding “universal consciousness” and the art of avant-garde pioneers such as Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy whose photographic experiments (solarizations, photograms etc) challenged the established notion of photographic "reality".

Manifestations of the ineffable exist in our subconscious where billions of organic and inorganic, human and pre-human images and experiences are stored in a kind of virtual hard drive. With the help of computer simulation-manipulation I attempted to retract primordial shapes and symbols, textures and patterns, spaces of darkness and luminance from this collective depository and rendered them into digital post-photographic photograms.

My intention with this experimental work was to suggest that everyday reality as we normally perceive it is a kind of virtual reality: it is a product of our limited awareness and an illusion imposed by our senses. According to Buddhist teachings our minds are integral parts and exponents of a universal network of energy (“universal mind”) which is eternal, indestructible and omnipresent. By applying appropriate techniques and practices -such as meditation and artistic creation- the individual has the potential to rise above trivial reality and experience a radiant supra-reality and enlightened state of mind (“clear light”).