David Orr : Radiance + Reflection: Mandalas and Moon

R ADIANCE + REFLECTION: MANDAL AS

and

MOON

DAVID ORR

for

AJO + NJL

FRONT COVER: (U PPER): DA I H A N N YA- K YŌ (S U T R A O F G R E AT W I S D O M) © 2018 DAVI D O RR (LOWER): MOON MANDAL A N° 13

© 202 2 DAVI D O RR

ALL TEXT + PHOTOGRAPHS (E XC E P T I N G E S SAYS , Q U OTAT I O N S + I M AG E S N OT E D B E LOW) CO PYRI G HT © 202 2 DAVI D O RR W W W. DAVI D - O R R .CO M

cƒc ISBN 978-0-9978021-2-2

CFC PRESS C ATA LO G D E S I G N : & c & c A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D U N D E R I N T E R N AT I O N A L A N D PA N -A M E R I C A N CO PY R I G H T CO N V E N T I O N S .

N O PA RT O F T H I S B O O K M AY B E R E P R O D U C E D I N A N Y F O R M W H AT S O E V E R WITHOUT WRIT TEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR(S).

IMAGE CREDITS

V I I I — I X ( L— R ) : F R A N C I S C O D E Z U R B A R Á N : S A I N T F R A N C I S I N M E D I T A T I O N : W I K I M E D I A C O M M O N S • H E V A J R A M A N D A L A , 1 5 t h C E N T U R Y : T I B E T H O U S E U S X I V - X V ( L— R ) M O H A M M A D R E Z A D O M I R I G A N J I : P A N T H E O N O C U L U S , 1 2 6 - 1 2 8 A D : W I K I M E D I A C O M M O N S • H I L M A A F K L I N T : S V A N E N , N ° 1 7, G R U P P I X / S U W , S E R I E S U W/ U W : W I K I M E D I A C O M M O N S X V I - X V I I D A M I E N H I R S T : Z I R C O N Y L C H L O R I D E A R T N E T • V I J A C E L M I N S : S T A R F I E L D : M O M A X V I I I VA S I LY K A N D I N S K Y: C I R C L E S W I T H I N A C I R C L E : W I K I M E D I A C O M M O N S X I X ( F R O M T O P) B R I D G E T R I L E Y: U N T I T L E D ( B A S E D O N P R I M I T I V E B L A Z E ) : A R C H E U S / P O S T M O D E R N • A G N E S P E LT O N : D E P A R T U R E : P H O T O G R A P H B Y PA U L S A LV E S O N • J O H N C A G E : 4' 3 3 " ( I N P R O P O R T I O N A L N O TAT I O N ) : M O M A I M A G E S O F A R T W O R K I L L U S T R AT I N G E S S AY S A N D F O R E W O R D A P P E A R U N D E R T H E C A A FA I R U S E G U I D E L I N E S .

E V E RY AT T E M P T H A S B E E N M A D E T O E N S U R E A C C U R A C Y I N I D E N T I F Y I N G S O U R C E S A N D A S S I G N I N G C R E D I T. I N I N S TA N C E S O F E R R O R P L E A S E C O N TA C T C F C P R E S S ; C O R R E C T I O N S W I L L A P P E A R I N F O L L O W I N G E D I T I O N .

DAVID ORR MANDALAS

REFLECTION

RADIANCE +

and

MOON

“So you should view this fleeting world— A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

— T H E D I A M O N D S Ū T R A N ° 32 —

MANDALAS

REFLECTION

RADIANCE +

and

MOON

FOREWORD Robert A.F. Thurman

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RADIANCE + REFLECTION David Orr

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TO SEE THE STILLNESS IN THE CHAOS THROUGH ART Allison C. Meier

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ILLUMINED + MANDAL A LUNAE Sacred texts and the moon, reconfigured into mandala forms

2

V E S S E L S / D I S PAT C H E S / L O O P S

34

PERFECT VESSELS

36

FIFTY-TWO FLOWERS

40

VIDEO LOOPS

42

WORD LOOPS

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PHRASE MANDALA

50

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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FO R E WO R D + E S SAYS

David Orr’s work is elegant, challenging, inspiring, memorable. Elegant are the vessels, polished human skulls with extraordinary patterns on their surfaces, mysterious patterns in their tunnels and orifices, the frontal presentations of course are subliminally terrifying reductions of what lies beneath one’s familiar face. Confronting them is enlightening.

R O B E R T A . F. T H U R M A N

FO R E WO R D

Orr calls these skulls “perfect vessels”—interesting, in that the flow of sensitive beings’ evolutionary intelligence from beginningless lives channels itself into this complex brain instrument that experiences, reacts, understands the extraordinary magical universe.

The blissful love force of consciousness creates that human brain, and structures solid earth elements into a bone container to protect the exquisite sensitive complexity that finds joy in inconceivability, coordinating the sense organs and also going beyond them.

Christian monks and nuns keep skulls in their chambers to remind themselves of the reality of death, in their quest to intensify faith in their savior who conquered it. Tibetan Buddhist lama yogis and yoginis use skull vessels as bowls for offerings to their divine Buddhas and bodhisattvas, thus demonstrating their ideal of the nondual awareness that transforms even death into endless life. They also remember impermanence and evanescence as part of infinite renewal.

Francisco de Zurbarán: Saint Francis in Meditation (detail), 1635-1639

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Then there are the “illuminations,” even more mysterious, even in their clarion elegance. From a distance, they seem like medallions, distinguished awards that might have belonged to the most eminent among the inhabitants of the skull vessels. When you get closer, irresistibly attracted by their symmetrical beauty, you see the folded parchments and fabrics on which exotic letters from scriptural pages from many cultures, many spiritualities. There seem to be mandalic portions of Bibles, transcendent wisdom scriptures, Taoist classics, Hebrew law codes, and ‘rational’ texts.

As for the pairing of the vessels with the mandalic medallions, perhaps the intimation is that the scriptures have emerged from the living intelligences operationalizing the brains that pulsed with life within these skulls, and/or the scriptures containing the codes which control the further structuring of evolving intelligence and sensitivity, as the human flowing lifeforms continue to evolve toward the highest ideals of wisdom and love. Whatever the expressions in words, Orr has created clear visions that are challenging and inspiring.

— Robert A.F. Thurman, Ph.D. Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, Co-founder and president, Tibet House US

Hevajra Mandala (detail), 15th Century

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I‘m often preoccupied by order and pattern. How we seek and create it.

Whether or not we’ve uncovered an existing order or simply imposed our own structures over systems we don’t yet fully comprehend. As a result, I have been drawn to areas where philosophy, science, and art overlap. That seems where truth is most likely to reside. I am by no means alone: books such as Physics and Philosophy (Werner Heisenberg), A Beautiful Question (Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek), The Tao of Physics (Fritjof Capra), The Universe in a between theoretical physicist David Bohm and mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti all explore areas where "rational" models of thought interweave with spiritual ones. Even if the goal has been simply to observe a problem through a different frame of reference, this kind of thinking has often proved productive. This link isn't as distant as one might think (after all, scientists were originally

D AV I D O R R

RADIANCE + REFLECTION

Single Atom (His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama), and the legendary conversations

termed 'Natural Philosophers'): Many philosophers demonstrate a steely rigor, and to say scientists don't possess poetic souls is to say one has not yet read Carlo Rovelli.

For these reasons, this exhibition is an auspicious one for me: I'm able to show my work in a venue founded in honor of the Dalai Lama, who has always encouraged interdisciplinary investigation. Tibetan Buddhism already revels in the visual, which is appealing to any artist, but the connection for me goes far deeper. There have been several projects in my art practice where I realized my thinking was aligned with Buddhist ideas. Impermanence, at first, then cycles, then what Thich Nhat Hahn (author of The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching) termed "Interbeing," the idea that "The one can be seen in the all, and the all can be seen in the one."

CIRCLES + CYCLES All the works in Radiance + Reflection explore the idea of the Mandala (Sanskrit for 'circle') as a model of the universe or cosmogram. Carl Jung noted that the mandala form surfaced in every belief system he had studied. Indeed, a

David Orr, Moon for C+D, 7/31/2021

x

circle has consistently been the geometry most chosen when representing complex information, from the earliest known celestial depictions to particle probability diagrams used in quantum physics. Which universe is being depicted depends on the series. Perfect Vessels are sculptural symbols of impermanence. Mandala Lunae are cosmograms, created from a small chip of the cosmos. ILLUMINED cosmograms are formed by abstracting sacred texts (mystic and scientific), in order to better point towards truth. WORD LOOPS and the various video cycles use language and images to build cyclic connections, including the viewer to close the loops, and relating to the repetition and interweaving that appears in sacred language.

PERFECT VESSELS As an exploration of symmetry, I began photographing human skulls facing the camera then digitally repeating one half horizontally to create a newer, perfectly balanced, sculptural form (even as I was reinforcing the original shape). At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, a noted pathology museum, many of the skulls are misshapen due to disease, and I liked the idea that, simply by repeating these ‘imperfections,’ I achieved results closer to perfection. The word vessel has many meanings: a container; a craft one travels in; a conduit through which powerful energy manifests itself; a utilitarian form that can be admired both as artifact and art.

Each work in this series means to evoke all of these qualities, while representing the location of Robert Jastrow's 'enchanted loom' where we each build our individual projections of the world. The end images appear on discs, creating a mandala form serving as both a stylized symbol of impermanence, and potential portal.

MANDALA LUNAE Begun while staying-in-place during the pandemic, and initially intended as a way to raise the spirits of friends and family during a difficult time, these moon mandalas organically evolved into a proper series. In 2021, I was gifted

David Orr, Perfect Vessel [ Unknown / N° 1006.80 ], 2016

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a telescope, and began making photographs of the moon. I began digitally recombining and repeating the moons into patterned shapes, creating mandalas which I’d email each Monday (itself named after the moon). As the weeks added up, the work evolved, and I realized that the shapes tended to reflect patterns we are drawn to in nature. It has become a weekly practice: a way of both staying in touch and reminding people I care about to look towards light, while challenging myself to photograph and create something worthy

RADIANCE + REFLECTION

of release. I take comfort in the fact that—whether seen by friends in America, Australia, France, Holland, India, New Zealand, Russia, the UK, etc.—if we look up at night we’re all seeing the same moon, in its same phase (although at a unique angle, determined by where we’re standing on the globe).

I see the moon as a reminder of how disparate lives are interwoven. It appears in virtually every mythology. It has powerful influence on us here on earth and the way we measure time (the moon's cycle and name created the concept of months). For centuries, the moon has been an enduring Buddhist symbol of truth and enlightenment. The end configurations in the Mandala Lunae series are influenced by sacred geometry, fractals, orbital patterns, the Fibonacci sequence (the spiral that appears in snail shells and galaxies), and other patterns we find in nature, even as they serve as meditations on light.

ILLUMINED Books were among the first objects I began to photograph and digitally reconfigure, starting around 2006. My feeling was: books could take me places, and I wanted to make abstract, volumetric ‘places’ out of books. I began by photographing editions I’d find in used bookstores. While I quite liked the idea of creating sculptural forms from any humble mass-market paperback, I wanted to start with elements closer to the original writing. During a residency at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS) in 2016-2018, I began photographing spiritual, mystical, and philosophical texts—often one-of-a-kind sūtras, manuscripts,

David Orr, Moon Mandala N° 17 (detail), 2021

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and illuminated panels—from that storied Los Angeles institution. Founded by prolific author and seeker Manly Palmer Hall in 1934, the PRS library’s collection holds over 50,000 items from myriad wisdom traditions. A wide range of scholars — including author Aldous Huxley, archivist/artist Harry Smith, religious studies scholar Huston Smith, and noted psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung — used the PRS library’s resources for their research. Once I've made a photograph which I feel captures the unique material qualities of a particular book or text, I recombine it, repeating the original photographic elements by a multiple relevant to the text or the philosophy it contains: 18 (books in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras); 7 (‘rays of wisdom’ detailed in a Theosophical manuscript); 4 (cardinal directions in a Rosicrucian notebook). The end form becomes an interwoven, dimensional, mandala. The language in each manuscript that I photograph creates a discrete conceptual model of the universe; an intricate, multifaceted construction of thought. From those, I made visual forms, often with the original writing obscured, evoking the ancient Daoist idea that: “the deepest truths can never be captured by words alone.” Ultimately, each work in this series serves as a symbol and beacon of an ideal—sparks of thought in the dark.

EVERY THING CONTAINS EVERYTHING Ideas of Interconnection have figured prominently in Buddhist thought for centuries. Buddhist texts such as the Avatamsaka (flower garland) Sūtra describe a cosmos of infinite realms upon realms, mutually containing one another. In fields such as biology and physics, scientists have been realizing that from rhizomes to quantum mechanics, the world is indeed revealed to be more interwoven than we ever suspected. The works in this exhibition vary in their approaches to depicting this phenomenon. Some are visually simple, some fairly complex, some have a vortex effect when viewed.

All are intended to be meditative, help guide a person past their everyday perceptions, and really see.

— David Orr

David Orr, Nemrod (detail), 2018

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being in an endless loop, where activities that were once regular diversions fell away and the daily cycle of waking and tending to what was necessary and safe became a repetitive rhythm. In these patterns was an opportunity for introspection on what each of the small stages of a day can mean, where with intention even something as basic as sending an email can be a purposeful act of connection.

Receiving David Orr’s mandala4monday altered photographs of the moon each Monday at midnight in my inbox has been one of these moments of pause. I initially got to know

ALLISON C. MEIER

TO S E E TH E S TI LLN E SS I N TH E CHAOS TH RO U G H ART

For many of us, the COVID-19 pandemic has often been an experience of

Orr’s work through his Perfect Vessels series in which human skulls were mirrored into symmetry (works from this series appear in this exhibition) and All That Is Solid Melts Into Air in which he photographed the sky above sites where violent deaths had occurred. Although these Mandala Lunae photographs similarly imposed an order on something to bring new meaning, they were different, and not only in not directly meditating on death. Photographing the moon through a telescope and then remixing it, Orr has offered a weekly way of seeing one of the most familiar sights in the sky in an unfamiliar way. And no matter where we were or what was happening in the world, we could always return to it each night as a point of interconnection.

Some of the symbolism in the shapes of art has been intentional; other meanings are in their nature. A circle is present across cultures in our language, architecture, and art; it echoes in its curve the shape of the Moon, the Earth, the Sun, and the orbits these celestial bodies make around each other. In the Mandala Lunae pieces, Orr uses the phases of the moon for an array of complex patterns. They fan out like the petals of flowers and spiral like

Pantheon Oculus, 126-128 AD

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galaxies, this augmentation turning a celestial object into a larger representation of the cosmos. The waxing and waning of the light on the lunar surface offer crescents that Orr overlaps into intricate lattices as well as fully illuminated orbs that he has arranged like tessellations. Every piece is contained within a circle, giving the series continuity and a parallel to the Moon where each work begins. Some have been animated into videos; one brings them all together in a sequence to show their variations while drawing the focus to a shared center point, another animates the creation of a spiral. Along with a video of Orr’s photographs of California flora in the sun, these pieces draw connections between nature, math, geometry, and technology for a 21st-century take on fundamental parts of our universe.

There has recently been a rise of interest in both contemporary and historic art that grapples with ideas of interconnection and the sacred. The blockbuster 2018-19 Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York had early 20th-century paintings by the Swedish artist installed along the spiraling ramp of the museum. Imbued with deeply symbolic colors and shapes, af Klint’s art was created to express spiritual concepts, including the lifecycle of a person. A retrospective on the work of Agnes Pelton that debuted in 2019 at the Phoenix Art Museum and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art was vivid with paintings whose biomorphic forms and layers of luminous color were guided by the American artist’s study of esoteric texts including Theosophy. While these artists have often been left out of histories of 20th-century art—in part because of their strong involvement with the occult—their work resonated with audiences as a fresh look at abstraction.

Other artists of the early 20th century also considered how color and form could convey something beyond the distillation of abstraction, such

Hilma af Klint, Svanen, N° 17, grupp IX/SUW, serie SUW/UW (1915)

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as Wassily Kandinsky who in 1912 published Concerning the Spiritual in Art. This mystical side of modernism has frequently been overlooked even as it has endured as a thread through the decades. Like Orr, many contemporary artists have likewise engaged with the mandala. The late Paul Laffoley painted mandala-inspired visual systems for communicating transcendental ideas, while Robert Irwin has layered aluminum shapes to create sculptural pieces that cast mandala-like shadows, the tangible and the intangible coming together into a whole. Damien Hirst has throughout his practice used the structure of mandalas to evoke something cosmic through acts of chance, like his spin paintings, or by bringing flatly painted, evenly spaced dots into circular groupings, even as the endless creation of these works questions if the artist sees the echoes of the sacred in them as significant or merely sellable.

Orr’s ILLUMINED series transforms unexpected sources into mandalas. These works are based on photographs from sacred manuscripts, philosophical texts, and sūtras at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. As with Mandala Lunae, the artistic process is visible here; we can look closely to see the fold of a page or calligraphic writing, reminding us of the materiality of the objects that have been reformed. Just as some choose to view art by af Klint, Pelton, and others as purely abstraction, it is possible to view these kaleidoscopic works as deconstructions of photographs without examining their deeper contexts. Yet the original material and the knowledge it holds give them an underlying power. Similarly, the Perfect Vessels can be read as Tibetan symbols of impermanence, but they are also the skulls of real people now in the Hyrtl Skull Collection in the Mütter Museum at College of Physicians of Philadelphia and their

Damien Hirst, Zirconyl Chloride, 2008

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individualizing differences—missing teeth, shattered bones, decay from disease—are reminders of lives of hardships.

Likewise, Orr’s WORD LOOPS reimagine things through new relationships, here words and phrases in arrangements that play on their meanings.

Among them is Phrase Mandala Flower Garland Sūtra [Book 30] where the looping words pull the viewer in through glimpses of whirled phrases, like “These various forms in atoms all produce untold lights.” Even towards the center when the words become too small to read, there is the weight of the small things becoming something greater and language being a medium for something divine. Others in this series involve diptychs—pairing words like “Here” with a mirrored “There” and “Not That” with “Not This”—as a modern exploration of concepts in Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism that is reminiscent of artist Ed Ruscha’s bold use of language.

The surface of these pieces is highly reflective so as you look closer at the aluminum panels there is a distortion of what’s around you, making the observation part of the work.

Along with Buddhism and its views on impermanence, Orr cites as inspiration art engaged with stillness as well as with movement. This includes the intense concentration in the intricate art by Vija Celmins who draws by hand spiderwebs, waves, and galaxies, and Agnes Martin’s tranquil paintings of bleached out color responding to Zen Buddhism. John Cage’s experimental music had a similar spiritual approach that was heavily influenced by Buddhism, particularly by his time with Japanese Zen

Vija Celmins, Starfield, 2010

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scholar D. T. Suzuki. His music was often not about the end result but how it could remind a person of their place in the flow of time, even in a song of absolute silence. A couple of decades after Cage composed the 1952 4’33”, Nam June Paik created “TV Buddha.” The statue of Buddha watching its own live image on a television was a 20th-century take on how the physical and something beyond can be connected and how technology could inspire something meditative as much as the media that had come before.

On the side of movement, there are Marcel Duchamp’s 1930s spinning discs that use symmetry and cycles for optical effects and Bridget Riley’s creation of disorientation in her 1960s black and white abstract paintings that, although static, appear to move. Considering these influences when looking at Orr’s art, there is a link in using abstraction to alter perception, reframe something familiar, and provide a visual experience where the time the viewer spends with it allows for entering a reflective state.

The mandala configuration is a platform for art that is balanced between a sense of motion and meditation as the viewer is taken on a cyclical journey that begins and ends at any point. Just as every day we have another chance to restart and reorient, art can guide us into these contemplative moments, however brief. And with the rich influences in Orr’s art, from the esoteric to the night sky, there is an encouragement to find our own touchstones for order in the chaos and change our perspective on the world around us.

— Allison C. Meier Has written about art and culture for Hyperallergic, Lapham’s, Smithsonian, The New York Times, and many other publications

Wasily Kandinsky, Circles Within a Circle, 1923

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(upper) Bridget Riley, Untitled (based on Primitive Blaze), 1962 (middle) Agnes Pelton, Departure, 1952 (lower) John Cage, 4'33" (in proportional notation) 1952/53

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I LLU M I N E D + MAN DAL A LU NAE

MOON MANDALA N° 13

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MUHAMMAD ASCENDING

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I N T O H E AV E N

P E R S I A N I L L U M I N AT E D M A N U S C R I P T [ F R A G M E N T ]

2018

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TH E P R A J Ñ Ā PĀ R A M I TĀ S Ū T R A S

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(THE PERFECTION OF WISDOM)

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MOON MANDALA N° 23

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DA I H A N N YA - K YŌ

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( T H E S Ū T R A O F G R E AT W I S D O M )

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1888

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MOON MANDALA N° 26

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MOON MANDALA N° 17

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THE PSALMS OF

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1929

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1900s

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MOON MANDALA N° 21

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MOON MANDALA N° 1

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BY J OY E N ( J A PA N E S E P R I E S T ), 1 8 3 4

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MOON MANDALA N° 4

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MOON MANDALA N° 19

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MOON MANDALA N° 16

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MOON MANDALA N° 18

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T H E I N I T I AT E S

P R E M I E R P R I N T I N G C O M PA N Y

OF THE FLAME 30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

FI RS T ED ITI O N, 1922

27

SOURCE

NEMROD

ÉLIPHAS LÉVI MANUSCRIPT

30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

1830

28

MOON MANDALA N° 14

D AT E S E N T M O N D AY 1 2 /6/2 0 2 1

15x15-INCH CHROMOGENIC PRINT

29

MOON MANDALA N° 11

D AT E S E N T M O N D AY 1 1/ 1 5/2 0 2 1

15x15-INCH CHROMOGENIC PRINT

30

S Y LVA S Y LVA R U M :

SOURCE

A N AT U R A L H I S T O RY I N T E N C E N T U R I E S

W LEE, LO ND O N

30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

F I RS T ED I T I O N , 1627

31

THE

SOURCE

E M B E K K A A L A N K A R AYA [ I ]

SINHALESE MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE COLLECTION

30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

O F D R . A N A N D A C O O M A R A S WA M Y, 1 9 t h C E N T U R Y

32

MOON MANDALA N° 25

D AT E S E N T M O N D AY 2 /2 1/2 0 2 2

15x15-INCH CHROMOGENIC PRINT

33

V E S S E L S / D I S PAT C H E S / L O O P S

UNKNOWN / N° 1006.80 30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

COLLECTION NOTE 'BON E ROOM SPECI M EN'

36

MILAN JOANOVITS / MALE, 30 30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

COLLECTION NOTE ' R O B B E R A N D M U R D E R E R . E X E C U T E D I N B E L G R A DE .'

37

COLLECTION NOTE

GEZA UIRMENY / MALE, 80

‘AT T E M P T E D S U I C I D E AT A G E 70 BY C U T T I N G H I S T H R O AT;

30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

W O U N D N O T FATA L B E C A U S E O F O S S I F I E D L A RY N X . L I V E D U N T I L 8 0 W I T H O U T F U R T H E R M E L A N C H O LY.’

38

UNKNOWN / N° 1161.01 30 - I N C H D I A M E T ER A RC H I VA L A LU M I N U M D I S C

COLLECTION NOTE 'SYPHILITIC NECROSIS'

39

40

F I F T Y-T W O F L O W E R S

41

STILLS FROM FIFTY-TWO FLOWERS, SINGLE CHANNEL VIDEO LOOP, NTSC

Friday, April 9th, 2021.

and a way of staying in touch with those I care about. The last was sent on

each Friday at midnight sharp. These dispatches became a weekly practice,

photographing flowers on my daily walks, and began sending them out

ant figure confronting darkness. Confined to my neighborhood, I’d been

Milan “For believers and non-believers alike.” I was mesmerized by this defi-

Andreas Bocelli livestream a performance to the world from the Duomo in

flora-4-friday was a project I started soon after Easter of 2020, when I’d seen

NOO S

N O OS

NOO S

N O O S

Never present Single-channel video, NTSC HD, loop

42

Moon Build I [spiral] Single-channel video, NTSC HD, loop

43

Every Thing Contains Everything Single-channel video, NTSC HD, loop

44

Spirit Single-channel video, NTSC HD, loop

45

Text Loop

Text Loop

(Heart Sūtra)

(What Is)

Dye-infused curved (convex) archival aluminum panel

Dye-infused curved (concave) Archival aluminum panel

8 x 8 inches

8 x 8 inches

46

Text Loop

Text Loop

(Never Present)

(Flower Garland Sūtra)

Dye-infused curved (concave) Archival aluminum panel

Dye-infused curved (convex) Archival aluminum panel

8 x 8 inches

8 x 8 inches

47

Text Loop Diptych (Neti Neti) Dye-infused curved (L-convex; R-concave) archival aluminum panels 8 x 8 inches each

48

Text Loop Diptych (Neither) Dye-infused curved (L-convex; R-concave) archival aluminum panels 8 x 8 inches each

49

Phrase Mandala [Flower Garland Sūtra; Book 30 excerpt] Dye-infused curved (concave) archival aluminum panel 8 x 8 inches

50

FLOWER GARLAND SŪTRA [ BOOK 30 EXCERPT ] On the body of each buddha appear unspeakably many pores; In each of these pores they manifest unspeakably many forms.

The unspeakably many pores each radiate unspeakably many beams of light; In each of those beams of light appear unspeakably many lotuses; In each of those lotuses are unspeakably many petals; In each of those petals appear unspeakably many forms; In those untold forms also appear untold petals; In the petals are untold light rays, In the light rays untold forms; In each of those untold forms appear untold lights; In the lights appear untold moons.

And the moons also manifest untold moons; In each of those untold moons appear untold beams of light; In each of those light beams also appear untold suns; In each of those untold suns are manifest untold forms; And in each of those forms again are manifest untold rays of light; In each of those rays of light appear untold lion thrones.

Each with untold ornaments.

Each with untold lights, With untold beautiful forms in the lights, with untold pure lights in the forms; In each of those pure lights also appear various subtle lights; These lights also radiate various lights, untold, unspeakably many.

In each of these various lights appear wondrous jewels like mountains; The jewels appearing in each light are unspeakably many, untold.

One of those mountainlike jewels manifests untold lands; All of the mountainlike jewels manifest lands like this.

Reducing one land to atoms, The forms in each atom are untold; All of the lands atomized, each atom’s forms are unspeakably many, untold.

These various forms in atoms all produce untold lights; In each light appear untold buddhas.

[ REPEAT ]

51

M Y D E E P E S T G R AT I T U D E T O

SHARON LINEKER

•

G R AT E F U L T H A N K S T O

ROBERT THURMAN PHILIP GLASS RH EN DA M EISER B E ATA T I KO S A N D A L L AT T I B E T H O U S E

•

SPECIAL THANKS TO

JULIA HIRSCH D U N VA G E N M U S I C L AU R I E AN D ERSO N A M Y A N D WA LT E R H A N S E L L J O E J O H N S T O N + M E G A N W I L L O U G H BY B I R G I T, J O H N S O N + O L I V I A KO S G E I C H R I S T O P H E R W I L L O U G H BY JANGO SIRCUS A N N A VA R S H AV S K AYA JOSEPH COSEY JAM ES LECCE JEN LIU

A L L AT T H E P H I L O S O P H I C A L R E S E A R C H S O C I E T Y A L L AT T H E M Ü T T E R M U S E U M

H E A R T F E LT G R AT I T U D E T O

H IS H O LI N ES S TH E 14th DAL AI L AMA AN D TH E PEO PLE O F TIB E T

NOOM

dna

D I VAD RRO

SA LADNAM :NOITCELFER + ECNAIDA R