being(s)

being(s)

When an anthropologist finally gives in to art, you have to expect something like this.

The figures in these art works have much of the form and characteristics of human beings, but they are not actually people. We could call them “anthropomorphs” (which are stylized human figures like the ones we once painted on cave walls). These figures are generic beings, of indeterminate sex and lacking almost all of the attributes we utilize to identify ourselves and one another as individuals. Transcending (or bypassing) the individual, these anthropomorphs embody qualities of human nature and/or moments of human experience stripped down to essential elements. They are naked, unadorned, fully disclosed… and inward focused. Their closed eyes and absence of ears are not for shutting out the world, but for listening and seeing inwardly, while being completely exposed to the outer. The body fully experiences a situation or condition, while the organs that are most entrained toward naming and concept are inhibited.

These beings have no individual stories. Each one exists only in the moment, its full potency expressed in a single existential situation. For these beings, “dream” and “reality” are not differentiated, so of course they can fly and levitate. And of course their bodily form and movement are not constrained by ordinary human physiology and kinesiology. Their experience is our experience but on a more holistically reflexive plane.

These works are done on handmade Nepali lokta paper, which I favor because it refuses to be a passive participant in the creation of a painting. It is kind of like the ground conditions of life that we must work with whether we like it or not.