Charlie Sheard | Manga Without Words

Since the early 1980s, Charlie Sheard has explored the history of painting in his work. Via prehistoric caves, Baroque architectures, and White Cube museums, the artist maintains that his medium has always been physical and sensual by nature, long before it found traction in intellectual discourses. Thought, nor narrative, are pursuits of Sheard’s, who instead considers himself a conduit for the direct transference of bodily energy onto his canvas or paper. This apparent freedom, from form and consciousness, was earned over many years learning and teaching the painstaking techniques and theories of colour practiced by famed Old Masters.

“Manga and Anime are the spirit of the age we live in. Manga is also the only thing left in popular culture which is still hand drawn. The Manga pages shown here conflate key passages from Heidegger’s Sein Und Zeit with Ezra Pound’s Canto XC, and also with Season 3 of the Dragon Ball Z Anime (especially the scenes presenting the apotheosis of Goku on the planet Namek).

Heidegger is not a “philosopher” in the conventional sense, his book is a mystic text that transmits the experience and meaning of Being. In his Canto XC, Ezra Pound invokes ancient Deities of Nature to offer prayer for transfiguration to the spirits of the dead. Son Goku ( ) is the Monkey King, Sun Wu Kong ( ), transplanted to 21st century Japan and transcended into the Divine. “Despite my calm quiet heart, I am the legendary warrior awakened” he says. In The Journey To The West, Sun Wukong’s original master is Subodhi, i.e. Subhūti, Buddha’s disciple who mastered emptiness and was rained upon by blossoming flowers.

I have utilized different techniques and materials in each of the paintings, and I have employed the widest variety of forms possible. Notwithstanding everything written here, however, these paintings are developed from meditation and from processes of Pure Abstraction (such as automatic drawing), rather than as expression of thought, and they are empty of the artist’s intention at time of creation.”

Charlie Sheard, April 2023