Meditation

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Minji Cho
Meditation

About the Item

Cho's self-imposed constraints of using only traditional media to render her works give each painting an identifiable "oriental" aesthetic, yet the subject, herself and her spirituality, strays far from this discipline which usually favors bucolic vistas in lieu of more individualistic portraiture. These stronger figurative subjects of Cho's self-portraits thereby connote a modern interpretation of Oriental painting. The artist's face expresses this duality as it is variously transposed onto the face of Buddha and a cyborg. Before the Eyes collapses the temporality between the stone sculptures of antiquity, ink washes of the early modern, the artist in the present, and the perhaps inevitable androidique future. The reconfiguration of the deity's image follows in a two thousand year old tradition of mimesis starting with Greco-Bactrian art and continuing today with each new technological advancement. The continuity between the first sculptures to .gif files in the image of Buddha perhaps is due to its place of only one of two major religions with a singular enigmatic ambassador, the other being Jesus Christ. Like Jesus, Buddha has been represented a myriad of ways, from the pale lithe Buddhas of Thailand, fleshy Buddhas of Tibet, and solemn Chinese Buddhas. And, as in Cho's work, the future may hold a whole subcategory of robotic Buddhas. The title of the show, Before the Eyes, is derived from an approximate translation of the Sanskrit word pratyaksa ( प्रत्यक्ष ), itself a synonym for the more widely known vipassanā ( विपश्यन ). Used in canonical Buddhist texts the term means an insight into the true nature of reality, a step towards enlightenment achieved through meditation wherein one comes to a lucid comprehension of natural disposition of the cosmos. What is defined as being necessary to said comprehension is an understating of impermanence, suffering, and the non-self. For the artist, a practicing buddhist, vipassanā meditation can allow one to realize the continuity of the human experience that transcends temporarily and connects the individual to both the past (antiquity) and present (modernity).

Creator:
Minji Cho (1990, Korean)
Dimensions:
Height: 64.5 in (163.83 cm)Width: 49.25 in (125.1 cm)
Medium:
Ink,Mulberry Paper,Pigment
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU68332941443